WELCOME TO PARADISE LOST

Our way of life systematically destroys its own foundations. Why don't we change anything about it, even though we know about it? Falk Richter, author and librettist, translates the Persian verse epic »The Conference of the Birds« by Farid ud-Din Attar into our time for the Kunstfest Weimar. In his work, we humans are visited by a flock of birds that denounce our political, cultural, socio-economic and ecological transgressions. The birds urge humans both to journey toward themselves and to reach a global agreement to finally change the devastating conditions. The result is a musical theater that takes on the explosive sociopolitical issues of turbo-capitalism, climate change and the destruction of nature: What are we willing to give up? What are we losing? Jörn Arnecke's composition proves to be the ideal sound world for Richter's speech landscapes.

It forms the platform for the speeches and rebuttals and organizes Richter's floods of text and images, which it simultaneously sublimates. The staging by director and Weimar opera director Andrea Moses focuses on the confrontation between the current supporters and profiteers of the self-destructive system and the youthful protest movements that radically question their way of life. The spectators become involved in a kind of passion play and make their own pilgrimage through the various rooms of the e-werk weimar.