JAKOB LENZ

He did everything like everybody else; but there was an appalling void in him, he did not have any fear, or any desire; his existence for him was a necessary burden. It was thus that he continued to live.

Georg Büchner: Lenz, 1839

1776, in the mists of the Vosges, a silhouette is wandering on the mountain. This man on the edge of folly is Jakob Lenz, poet whose tumultuous plays gave its fanatical impetus to the pre-romantic movement known as Sturm und Drang. Lenz found refuge in the home of a clergyman of an Alsatian village and attempted to escape the madness which would end up getting the better of him. In 1835, struck by the fate of this cursed poet, Georg Büchner recounts the episode in a dazzling short story. In 1979, the German composer Wolfgang Rihm wrote an opera after Büchner’s short story, a heady score and powerfully suggestive. In 2019, the immense stage director Andrea Breth will make her French debut by presenting her vision of Rihm’s Jacob Lenz at the Festival d’Aix, in a visionary spectacle which obtained the Faust Prize, the highest distinction in German theatre.

• LE FIGARO

  Andrea Breth's staging of Wolfgang Rihm's Jakob Lenz is virtually sublime. 

• LE MONDE

  Andrea Breth's staging of Wolfgang Rihm's first opera caused a sensation at Aix-en-Provence. 

• LES ÉCHOS

  A powerful of show.

• LA PROVENCE

  A stunning performance.