Missing in Cantu (eure Paläste sind leer)

The search for the legendary El Dorado and the allure of gold are the starting point of the shimmering, surreal operatic epic that Innsbruck composer Johannes Maria Staud ( 1974) and successful Upper Austrian playwright Thomas Köck ( 1986) have chosen for their first collaboration. The material, which contrasts the subjugation of the American continent by European colonization with the current disintegration of American society, is based on Köck's play “Eure Palaestes Are Empty (All We Ever Wanted).“ Three storylines are interwoven within it: the Amazon voyage of a group of Spanish conquistadors in search of the city of gold, sequences from a contemporary suburban settlement of the crumbling middle class, and the retrospective of a seer wandering through the dystopian remains of a former center of power.

The dynamics that Staud, who received the Austrian Art Prize for Music in 2022, translates into sound are intoxicating: the rush of gold, blood, and drugs symbolize transgressions and driving forces that make grasping reality impossible. This creates, in the composer's words, “a dazzling, complex whole that pushes traditional categories such as arias, recitatives, ensemble scenes, or choral passages into the background in favor of a multi-layered, hybrid stage design.“ With the Austrian premiere of Missing in Cantu, an opera by Staud is on the TLT's program for the first time, directed by the opera-experienced co-director of drama Bettina Bruinier.

Recommended for ages 16 and up

program

missing in cantu (eure Paläste sind leer)
Musiktheater von Johannes Maria Staud
Libretto von Thomas Köck
In deutscher Sprache mit deutschen Übertiteln

Place

Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck (English: Tyrolean State Theatre) is the state theatre in Innsbruck, Austria, located near the historic Altstadt (Old Town) section of the city. The theatre is surrounded by Imperial Hofburg, the Hofgarten, and SOWI Faculty of the University of Innsbruck. The main theatre has about 800 seats and the studio theatre in the basement has around 250. Plays, operas, operettas, musicals and dance theatre are performed at the theatre.