Der Menschenfeind

In the organizer's words:

We have long been living in an exaggerated simulation of reality. Politics looks like a reality show, summit meetings like photo opportunities. Heads of government and board members only shine with gestures and phrases. Everything seems to be a diplomatic theater of posts and empty phrases.

Molière's "Misanthrope" raises its voice in a very similar world: Alceste, the radically sincere one, wants no compliments, no ritualized lies, no social lubricants, but truth. His refusal to play society's games makes him an outsider - and the most fascinating character in this comedy.

What Molière observed at the court of Louis XIV at the time is omnipresent today: the contradiction between truth and staging. Alceste's reaction to this is radical: a man who responds to every empty phrase with the force of reality. And yet Molière shows the tragedy: radical truthfulness isolates. Alceste (Claudius Steffens) loves Célimène (Minna Wündrich) of all people, the master of irony and inauthenticity. She embodies what he despises - and yet attracts him irresistibly.

As in every satire, there is an abyss behind the lightness. The courtly masquerade is harmless compared to the political productions of our day, whose lies have deadly consequences. Perhaps what we need today is Alceste's radicalism - to shake ourselves and ask what we offer and allow ourselves to be offered.

The "Misanthrope" is directed by Sebastian Baumgarten, whose drama and opera productions have been widely acclaimed for years and who was most recently represented in Düsseldorf with his production of Brecht's "Mother Courage".