Production / 3sat-recording
The 10 Selected Productions

Graf Öderland

A street ballad in twelve scenes by Max Frisch

A co-production of Theater Basel (artistic directorship of Andreas Beck, proxy Almut Wagner) and Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel/Residenztheater (Munich)

Premiere 14 February 2020 (Basel)

Stefan Bachmann stages Frisch’s drama as a highly musical horror trip with powerful imagery, giving full scope to the suggestive power of the theatre.

 

A bank clerk bludgeons a janitor to death: with no reason, no motive, just like that. This murderer and his “senseless” deed totally derail the general prosecutor whose job it is to bring the charge. In a mad rush, he leaves his well-ordered existence and becomes an axe-wielding murderer, initiating a bloody movement against the socio-political status quo. Stefan Bachmann takes the subtitle of this “street ballad” at face value. The multifaceted live music, a cast who are clearly going all out and Olaf Altmann’s congenial spatial positing create a nightmarish maelstrom that sees the story of “Count Oederland with the axe in his hand” as timeless while at the same time evoking countless highly topical associations.

Theatertreffen-juror Sabine Leucht about the production
A general prosecutor is catapulted from his bourgeois existence by an unfathomable case: An upright bank clerk has committed murder with no other motive than an internal feeling of unrest, which will go on to have ever more turbulent repercussions in Max Frisch’s “Graf Öderland (Count Oederland)”. Among Frisch’s oeuvre, this “street ballad in twelve scenes” is the play most open to interpretation. Fragmented and full of abrupt twists, it was quickly rejected by the theatres and loved by its author like a problem child.

Soprano Anna Netrebko took New York by storm when she performed the role of the fragile Puritan maiden Elvira. Her daring take on the heroine’s famous mad scene earned her rapturous standing ovations from sold-out houses night after night. Overflowing with ravishing arias and ensembles, this bel canto gem also stars Eric Cutler as Elvira’s love Arturo, Franco Vassallo as her suitor Riccardo, and John Relyea as her uncle Giorgio.

Jaan Malin esitleb oma uut kogu. Temaga vestleb Siim Lill.