Homo Oeconomicus

In the organizer's words:

Opera by Andrea Tarrodi

When Adam Smith, the founder of political economy, was working on his magnum opus The Wealth of Nations, he lived with his mother Margareth Douglas. According to Adam Smith, the fact that everyone pursues their own advantage is the basis for the well-being of society as a whole. As he worked out this basic idea, his mother took care of his everyday well-being. And she probably also cooked him dinner on the day he wrote: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, brewer and baker that we expect what we need to eat, but from their looking after their own interests."
250 years after the first publication of The Wealth of Nations, composer Andrea Tarrodi and her librettist Helena Röhr ask themselves: Did Adam Smith perhaps miss something? Are our current ideas about the economy still only based on half the truth?
The internationally sought-after Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi is famous for her colorful, impressionistic orchestral works. However, she also performs as a singer-songwriter. In this work commissioned by the Hanover State Opera, both sides of the composer can be combined in a chamber opera that is as entertaining as it is multi-layered. Together with Helena Röhr, who also directs, she creates an opera about business and everyday life, about mothers, about rational and not-so-rational decisions, about masculinity and femininity and what we think they are.