Innocence - (UN)SCHULD Verjährt Nicht

In the organizer's words:

A large wedding celebration in Finland reaches its climax with a banquet at a richly laid table.

Ten years before this celebration, a killing spree took place at an international school in Helsinki. The perpetrator was the groom's brother. His family wants to erase the memory of the terrible event by marrying off the assassin's brother to a young woman from Romania who knows nothing about the crime. But during the party, the family meets an old acquaintance, the waitress Tereza, who lost her daughter in the massacre. The encounter leads to an inevitable confrontation with the past. The boundaries between perpetrators and victims become increasingly blurred, and the question of guilt and innocence becomes ever more surprising and inexorable as events unfold.

The opera by renowned composer Kaija Saariaho with a libretto by the highly acclaimed novelist Sofi Oksanen is structured like a thriller that remains exciting and intriguing even after repeated listenings and viewings. Grand opera in cinema format!

The journey of this 100-minute musical drama to the Musiktheater im Revier also reads like a thriller. The MiR recognized its enormous potential during the early development phase and made a successful effort to bring the German premiere to North Rhine-Westphalia. Now that many other German theaters have recognized the potential of this topical and captivating opera, the MiR is proud to prove with its first performance in Germany that this highly topical piece, celebrated by both the public and the press, has its place in the versatile repertoire of a municipal theater.