After several visits to the opera houses in Münster and Darmstadt – where ‘Die Kantine’ (The Canteen) will premiere in spring 2026 – much of the concept of music theatre moving through the opera house has been consolidated. Most of the venues we will perform at have been finalised, as have the routes in between. The cast, 15 instruments in total, one from each group, musicians involved in the scenery, permission from various trades such as the costume department to include their rooms. This – and much more – has to be finalised before the actual work can begin. The space has to be negotiated before the material, the structure before the narrative.
The approach in ‘Die Kantine’ differs fundamentally from what is normally performed as an opera in these theatres: there is no concrete material to start with, from which we start, let alone a fully composed score that is staged in a new way. At first there is nothing – except the concept. And even that has to retain a self-confident fluidity. As we delve deeper into the project, the originally clear ideas become cloudy. And that’s a good thing. They condense. Matter changes its aggregate state. From hot application air to dripping concept condensates. At this point, we can take stock – original concept vs. what has emerged as particularly exciting from our research over the last few months.
Role reversal – artistic staff swap tasks with non-artistic staff. Conceptually appealing: the cellist puts make-up on the singer, who actually works in the evening wardrobe and is currently being replaced by the artistic director, while the caretaker plans the programme for the next season. However, a paradox arises in the realisation: visibility is created – but at the expense of difference. The subtleties of the respective activities become blurred, and with them the expressive possibilities of those involved. The result is not democratisation, but aesthetic smoothing. However, ‘Die Kantine’ does not want to mix up the roles from the outside, but rather reveal the inner mechanisms of the roles themselves. The exchange of roles must therefore be understood as a re-enactment of the re-enactment – not as an exchange of functions, but as a visualisation of their staging. An opera from the opera with the opera through the opera. Opera shelter – a biotope in a permanent and befitting state of disaster. It is no coincidence that the opera buildings seem to resemble large bunkers. The deeper one penetrates into their catacombs, the more the impression is reinforced. Something is protected or hidden behind the embrasure-like windows and the thick concrete walls. While the subjects being dealt with on stage are actually irrelevant, the opera company itself is a blueprint of a pre-industrial society of estates, a guild body. People carry out professions that have long since been automated and rationalised away in real life. The opera house is the shelter in which people put their heart and soul into their work.
The canteen – origin, utopia and open end. What the canteen in ‘Die Kantine’ is all about must remain an open question until the very last moment. The hypothesis is that the canteen is a place of horizontality, at odds with the steep hierarchy of the opera business. But perhaps it is also just a pretence. A place of longing that eludes our grasp – precisely because it is so concrete. During my time as a student, I worked part-time as a surtitler at the Badisches Staatstheater. From this perspective, I not only saw many operas, but also the operations, the staff, the routes between the departments and the building itself. In addition to the control room, from which we ran the surtitles, the canteen was my meeting point. Scenes took place here that still haunt me today: bodies in white make-up in baroque dresses in front of their ‘Toast Madagascar’ – crocodile people and SS officers drinking wheat beer. Grotesque simultaneity. The canteen was a fever dream – and at the same time the most real place in the house. Perhaps that is its paradoxical potential: it is what is never shown, but has already been realised throughout the play. Cipher, empty space, space of possibility. Title and illusion. Opera material.
