Name: 6. Chamber Concert
Start: 2026-05-11T19:30:00
Location: Salón Coliseo

Elisabeth Fricker

Tzu-Jen Chou

Daniela Dakaj

Antje Kroeger

Caroline Spengler

Hans-Christian Schwarz

Noelia Balaguer Sanchis

Theater Lübeck

Every theater is its own little cosmos, with its diverse professions, workshops, processes, and rituals. To ensure that the curtain can rise on the premiere after six weeks of rehearsals, many people are at work behind the scenes.

Public theater tour

A suddenly awakened desire throws Sergeant Don José off his usual path. A woman who unexpectedly throws a flower at his feet gives him access to a world he had previously closed off to. The woman's name is Carmen, and she is a social outsider. What she wants, she takes; when she loves, she does so with every fiber of her being. A coincidence brings Carmen and José together, or perhaps a misunderstanding. For José, erotically inexperienced, believes that the flower thrown at him has attracted Carmen's attention. To be with her, he accepts military demotion and imprisonment; in fact, he ultimately risks his entire civil existence for a relationship with Carmen. But after a short time, she has had enough of him and wants to break up with him. Carmen uncompromisingly asserts her right to freedom and self-determination.

Carmen

A little man in a forest? Quite the opposite: A tree stands on A.'s balcony. It seems to have grown overnight from a crack, a crevice in the concrete. The city's gardening department doesn't feel responsible, and the forestry department soon proves overwhelmed, as forests suddenly sprout up in every European city. Volunteers are sought to clear vegetation from the Eiffel Tower, and Bambi grazes in the canyons of high-rise buildings.

Forest

While "Don Giovanni" is being performed in the opera house, the real show takes place in the wine cellar next door – here, the poet Hoffmann entertains his customers with his fantastic tales in which people turn out to be machines, singing can be fatal, and mysterious figures seek to rob him of his reflection. The hidden core of every story: his relationship with the singer Stella, who is also on stage as Donna Anna in the opera. The longer the evening goes on, the crazier the stories become, until Hoffmann finally threatens to lose touch with reality...

Hoffmann's Tales Les contes d'Hoffmann

In his play "Birthday Candles," American playwright Noah Haidle spins a thread of life on which birthdays (some more, some less solemnly celebrated) are strung like pearls on a necklace. 100 years of life – 100 birthday cakes that Ernestine bakes each year according to her mother's recipe as she searches for her place in the universe. At 18, Ernestine is convinced she'll find that place on a theater stage, far away from her tranquil hometown, but as the saying goes, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." Ernestine starts a family with her childhood sweetheart, experiences highs and lows, and ultimately finds herself reflected in the questions, wishes, and dreams of those who come after her.

Birthday Candles

The godfather of the Beat Generation, William S. Burroughs, rock legend Tom Waits, and director Robert Wilson created "The Black Rider" in Hamburg in 1990: a dreamlike play about the price of escapism. Seemingly opposing worlds blend within it: the associative, often drug-induced lyrics of William S. Burroughs, driven by sound and rhythm, the raw, dissociative sound of Tom Waits, and a well-known German folk tale.

The Black Rider The Casting of the Magic Bullets

Germany is debating inheritance tax. Everyone seems to agree that inheritance needs to be made fairer. But how? Munich-based author Nora Abdel-Maksoud has the solution! Every inheritance is collected by the state and redistributed via a lottery. A random system instead of an ovarian lottery! And what authority is better suited to administer this new inheritance bureaucracy than the German employment offices?! In the soon-to-be-completely overcrowded waiting areas, job seekers are asked to put their children in line for waiting tickets – they take up less space. And so, among playing children in waiting area C, disinherited start-up entrepreneur Silke meets Maude, a citizen's income recipient. An encounter with explosive potential. Clerk Gabor also discovers this when the two women storm his office armed with a remote detonator and threaten to blow up his beloved SUV if Silke doesn't get her inheritance back. Maude, on the other hand, simply wants to be able to collect deposit bottles without the money being deducted from her basic security as "income."

Jeeps

The most powerful man in the Roman Empire, Emperor Nero, covets the beautiful and power-hungry courtesan Poppea. She demands that he marry her and crown her empress. To do so, however, Nero must first disown his unloved wife Ottavia. The philosopher Seneca tries in vain to temper Nero's desires, but this only draws his wrath. Empress Ottavia, fighting to maintain her position, commissions a courtier to murder her rival Poppea. But the plan backfires. Ottavia is found guilty, and Nero finally has a plausible reason to exile her and enthrone his lover.

The Coronation of Poppea L'incoronazione di Poppea

Composer John Kander tells a great love story in "Cabaret": Nightclub singer Sally Bowles and writer Clifford Bradshaw meet on New Year's Eve 1929 in Berlin. For a while, the newly in love couple's happiness seems perfect – despite their differing ideas about the future and their precarious circumstances. Sally lives for the day and sings at the famous "Kit Kat Klub" at night. Jealous Cliff can't deal with this. He is working on his second novel, but is in the midst of a creative crisis. Moreover, the mood of the "Golden Twenties" is increasingly changing, even in the liberal metropolis of Berlin. Fascism and anti-Semitism are poisoning society. Even the apolitical landlady, Fräulein Schneider, can no longer close her eyes to the rise of National Socialism.

Cabaret

It remained his last major orchestral work, which Johannes Brahms completed in 1887—a "final act of stupidity," as he announced to his publisher Simrock with characteristic irony. Brahms dedicated the Double Concerto for Violin and Cello to the violinist Joseph Joachim, with whom he had been friends for decades. This friendship had recently reached a crisis, however, and to break the ice between them, Brahms sent the score to his friend. Joachim gratefully accepted the offer; thus, a rapprochement was established, and the furious finale proved to be a veritable celebration of reconciliation between the two. A uniquely well-coordinated duo, the siblings Tanja and Christian Tetzlaff, come to Lübeck for this double concerto.

6th  Symphony Concert

Music and Congress Hall Lübeck

The devil loves music—especially when a violin is involved. Some even whisper that he invented it himself! Tartini's Devil's Trill Sonata, Paganini's lightning-fast Caprices, Schnittke's ghostly A Paganini —that doesn't sound like a human hand... or does it? In this concert, there's plucking, bowing, trickery, and seduction—until even the devil is amazed.

3.  Children's concert Devilishly good music

Along with the symphony, the song was Gustav Mahler's central compositional genre. Preferred textual sources for his songs are poems by Friedrich Rückert and the folk song collection "Des Knaben Wunderhorn." Star baritone Bo Skovhus, who also sings the title role in Alban Berg's "Wozzeck" at the Lübeck Theater this season, presents a select selection from Mahler's song oeuvre with Stefan Vladar on the piano.