About this event

David Bösch’s staging of Zemlinsky’s The Chalk Circle uses a deliberately pared-down visual language, avoiding chinoiserie in favor of poetic realism carried by a jazz-tinged, iridescent score. Patrick Bannwart’s plain, darkly fairy-tale set relies on abstract theatrical means; a giant baby drawing a circle of light opens the evening, and five glowing Chinese characters for hope, happiness, peace, love, and justice appear in Act III as symbolic counterpoints. Falko Herold’s costumes eschew historical exoticism, while Volker Weinhart’s lighting sculpts the atmosphere; Bannwart’s video design integrates projections. Dramaturge Anna Melcher provides a 10-minute audio guide. Under Hendrik Vestmann, the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker shape Zemlinsky’s eclectic musical language—between late Romanticism (Strauss, Mahler), jazz inflections, Far Eastern gongs, and Weill-like cabaret scenes—into a sound world that shifts from chamber delicacy to surging interludes, with even a hint of Turandot at the close.