Die grosse Stille

Culture is meaningful. Culture not only keeps us busy - and thus structures our everyday lives - it seems to give us existential stability above all. Making music, together or alone, is one of the oldest and most deeply rooted rituals in our collective identity. Music still serves as a human compass today. Nevertheless, it does no harm to put ritualized processes to the test: In the music theater project The Great Silence, the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart becomes existentially relevant for a group of people living in the future and far away from the earth. For them, unknown works by one of the most famous composers become both a daily reminder and a warning of what it means to be and remain human. Director Christopher Rüping, who is highly regarded and celebrated at home and abroad for his acting work and has been awarded the most important theater prizes, and his team make their long-awaited debut on the main stage of the Hamburg State Opera. They explore the question of what role and function such a timeless cultural asset as Mozart's music has for us and, in this music theater project, create the scenario of a remote world whose setting has little to do with our present-day reality. But man is the constant that has hardly changed fundamentally. What does Mozart's music trigger in us? How do people react to unexpected threats, how do they react to a real opportunity? And what happens when things go quiet after all?