Heimkehr – A Tone Poem

The evening tells the story of young people who believe in good and are broken by the cruelty of the world. At its centre are experiences of the Shoah, a reckoning with the past and the impossibility of return.

Two literary texts and the music inspired by them converge: Prince Myshkin’s monologue from Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” – poetically distilled by Ingeborg Bachmann and set to music by Hans Werner Henze – and a dialogue based on Imre Kertész’s novel “Fatelessness”, adapted by Lajos Parti-Nagy and accompanied by newly composed music from Judit Varga. Thus, a conversation unfolds between the actors about innocence and experience, foreignness and homecoming.