Der Findling: Music Theater by Franz Hummel and Susan Oswell

The Landestheater has a very special program for the Bruckner Year 2024: The opera Der Findling (The Foundling) by Franz Hummel and Susan Oswell, based on a text by Hermann Schneider, will be premiered at Bruckner's longtime workplace in the Old Cathedral.

The foundling does not intend to present only the biographical stations of Bruckner's life. Rather, this work is a multi-layered music-theatrical search for traces on the subject of Bruckner, which wants to get to the bottom of the special tonal and ideal aura that characterizes the works of this composer. Franz Hummel is one of the most exciting composer personalities of the last decades. Encouraged as a youth by Richard Strauss and Hans Knappertsbusch, he embarked on a remarkable career as a pianist. Since the 1970s, however, he has devoted himself exclusively to composing. Here his expressive spectrum ranges from exciting avant-garde sounds to musicals. After Franz Hummel passed away in August 2022 while working on his Bruckner opera, his wife and student Susan Oswell will complete the work.