Robinson

Stranded on a Caribbean island - that may seem like a place of longing to most of us. But for Robinson Crusoe, the sole survivor of a sunken ship washed up on the beach of an uninhabited island, the apparent paradise quickly turns out to be a place of damnation.

For this work commissioned by the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, composer Oscar Strasnoy collaborates with author Sigrid Behrens. Based on themes and motifs from Daniel Defoe's classic novel of 1719, they draw an arc from Robinson to the people who lead an insular existence in our society today: the forgotten, the lost, the abandoned, the outcast, those who have fallen out of the world. Her thoughts condense into reflections on various aspects that make up such a life in seclusion, on the run into the interior or in parallel worlds: the handling of time, the struggle against loneliness and emptiness, as well as the search for an overriding meaning of life.