Name: 8. Chamber Concert
Start: 2026-06-16T19:30:00
Location: Lübeck Town Hall

Johanna Jung

Vera Dörmann

Waldo Ceunen

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

"What kind of people were they? What were they talking about? Who dared to attack him in his apartment?" Before breakfast on his 30th birthday, two men appeared in Joseph K.'s room and declared him under arrest. They explained nothing more. The authority they were from and what he was accused of remained a mystery. The men didn't take him away, allowing Joseph K. to continue his work. Convinced of his innocence, his attempts to appear in court led him to the city's twisted attics. Joseph K. hired a lawyer, but he searched in vain for a solution to his case or a sensible course of action. Although Joseph K. was gradually absorbed in his trial, it made little progress—until one day he learned of his conviction...

The process

We live in the best of all possible worlds! At least, that's what Candide learned from his teacher Dr. Pangloss. When the Westphalian castle where he spent his youth is destroyed in war, he embarks on an adventurous journey into the unknown – via Paris and Lisbon to El Dorado. But with the right amount of optimism in his luggage, neither earthquakes nor shipwrecks, the Inquisition, nor other catastrophes can deter him from his path.

Candide

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

He is one of the greats of American rock music: an Oscar and Tony Award winner, a 20-time Grammy winner – and more than 60 million albums sold make him one of the most successful musicians of all time. His songs, sometimes melancholically dark, sometimes powerfully earthy, have won a huge fan base around the world. Autobiographical elements are repeatedly reflected in the songs: his difficult relationship with his father, his working-class background, but also social themes such as rural exodus in the USA or everyday racism in the provinces. His childhood and youth experiences – growing up in a small town in New Jersey, in a home shaped by a choleric father who failed to build an emotional relationship with his children – flow into his songs. With a mixture of anger, a longing for escape and freedom, but also with wistful nostalgia, he describes his roots and simultaneously expresses what concerns the "little man" on the street. In "My Hometown," for example, he sings about the decline of his hometown, empty shops, violence, and unemployment. He tells of failed lives, lost dreams, and defiant rebellion. His songs deal with life and death, friendship, family, idealism, the American Dream, and homelessness—and they reflect the psychological state of a nation.

My Hometown

A thematic focus from the art collection of the Museum Behnhaus Drägerhaus, which will be presented in an exhibition in 2026, is on paintings and pictures by female artists, including Paula Modersohn-Becker, Anita Rée, and Else Wex-Cleemann. Juxtapositions of their works reveal how the self-image of female artists has changed over time. Just as the works of female visual artists have often been marginalized and ignored, so have those of female composers. This soundscape concert combines chamber music and vocal works by outstanding female composers from various eras, from pioneers from the mid-19th century such as Clara Schumann to trailblazers at the beginning of the 20th century such as Lili Boulanger, who was the first woman to win the coveted "Prix de Rome" in France and died at the age of just 24, or Mélanie Bonis, who mostly published her works under the pseudonym Mel Bonis in order to conceal her gender, to contemporary composers such as Lera Auerbach.

2.  Sound Images Concert

Museum Behnhaus Drägerhaus

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.