Imagine waking up arrested for crimes you can't name, sung in German. Nightmare or Tuesday?
‘Someone must have slandered Josef K, for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.’ This is the famous opening line of Franz Kafka’s novel Der Prozess (The Trial). Gottfried von Einem’s opera of the same name also begins with this mysterious arrest. Josef K. suddenly finds himself in a world he cannot understand, faced with an accusation of which he knows nothing but which seems perfectly clear to everyone else and yet remains inexplicable; with an absurd court case that nevertheless follows strict rules; with an arrest that appears to have no effect on his life yet still leads to his death. Is Josef K. the victim of a conspiracy, or is his belief in a conspiracy the only chance of explaining an incomprehensible world?
Direction
Herheim's staging turns the courtroom into psychological torture chamber.
Production
Kammeroper's intimate space amplifies every paranoid whisper.
Acting
Robert Murray's Josef K. unravels in real time, vocally and physically.
Director
Stefan Herheim
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Einem composed this in 1953, post-war Austria grappling with collective guilt and denazification trials—Kafka suddenly hit different.
Herheim's production reportedly traps the audience in the same theatrical space as Josef K.—you're also being watched, also complicit.
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