Monster’s Paradise

A new work on the pulse of time! The music world has been waiting a long time for this: After their legendary works Bählamms Fest and Lost Highway, more than twenty years have passed since the composer Olga Neuwirth and the writer Elfriede Jelinek dedicated themselves to a joint piece of music theater. The two internationally acclaimed exceptional artists - Jelinek received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004 and Neuwirth the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2022 - have written Monster's Paradise, a commissioned work for the Hamburg State Opera. As avatars of themselves, they send two “vampiresses” on a journey around the world. They observe the decline of humanity while a tyrannical king and a sea monster he has conjured up himself fight for power. All hope rests on him: the great Gorgonzilla. But what kind of world is it that can only be saved by monsters? The supposedly ludicrous and absurd has the potential to sharpen our view of our reality. History repeats itself. Monster's Paradise is both a tragedy and a satyr play. Tobias Kratzer, artistic director of the Hamburg State Opera, directs the brand new political grotesque, a contemporary Grand Guignol.