Alpenglühen

Staged reading with Michael Maertens, Maria Happel, and others.

“...without a doubt Peter Turrini's most beautiful piece,” wrote DIE ZEIT after Claus Peymann's world premiere of ALPENGLÜHEN in 1993 at the Burgtheater, and even today, more than thirty years later, Turrini's play is a grand declaration of love for the theater: “a play about theater within theater, about being and appearance, loneliness and lost identity, reality and fiction. Just when one thinks they have recognized one of the characters, they transform into another,” says the author.

A blind, aging man lives in a lonely mountain cabin, where he mimics the voices of extinct alpine animals in the service of tourism. He leads a life of partly forced, partly chosen isolation. His connections to the world are a suitcase radio without batteries and the son of a farmer, who provides him with the answers to his questions about the world that he himself has drilled into him. Is the man really blind, and which story he tells about his blindness is true? Was he once – as he first claims – a journalist? Is he rather a former Nazi? Or perhaps a theater director? The only wish of the blind man, the visit of an empathetic, educated woman, is fulfilled by the blind association. But who is this lady who finds her way into the solitude and engages him in discussions about classic literature? The experienced prostitute, as she introduces herself, the secretary of the blind association, who yearns for perception, or perhaps an actress who specializes in the role of the lover, Julia?

Chamber actor Michael Maertens, celebrated last summer as "theater maker" at the Salzkammergut Festival Weeks, presents a character in which he unites comedy and depth of character; alongside him is chamber actress Maria Happel: for decades, the two have congenially embodied the most diverse love couples of the theatrical world.

With kind support from Marcus Meier