An angel falls from heaven and learns empathy through human suffering — Schumann's forgotten masterpiece finally gets its glow-up.
The inaugural season of Tobias Kratzer and Omer Meir Wellber's partnership at the Hamburg State Opera kicks off. The director and conductor present Schumann's rarely performed oratorio Paradise and the Peri. The Peri's quest for redemption, brilliantly interpreted by Vera-Lotte Boecker, illustrates many of today's issues, such as the need for empathy in a world shaken by crises.
Direction
Kratzer's staging makes 19th-century theology feel uncomfortably urgent.
Acting
Boecker's Peri carries three acts of longing in one sustained gaze.
Score
Wellber coaxes transparency from Schumann's dense, restless orchestration.
Director
Marcus Richardt
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Schumann composed this 1843 oratorio as his 'breakthrough' work, desperate to prove himself beyond Lieder; it briefly made him famous, then vanished from repertoire for 150 years.
The Peri's source material — Thomas Moore's 1817 poem 'Lalla Rookh' — was once a global sensation, now utterly forgotten; Kratzer's production essentially stages two layers of obscurity colliding.
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