The Soldiers at Komische Oper Berlin

The only opera written by the visionary composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann is an icon of contemporary musical theatre which appears to go well beyond all the borders of the genre. For many years The Soldiers was considered unplayable due to the technical demands it makes. Now Zimmermann's pacifist appeal can also be experienced in Berlin – in a new version by the Spanish director Calixto Bieito.

Located in the timeless setting "yesterday, today and tomorrow", the story Zimmermann tells is that of Marie, a young woman from a simple background who becomes a plaything of her chauvinist environment. Marie is engaged to a young draper, Stolzius, but when the wealthy French army officer Baron Desportes shows an interest in her, she returns his affection in the hope of social advancement. In the end, however, Desportes abandons her, leaving her to a terrible fate: now labelled a whore, she is raped by the soldiers and ends up in the gutter, a broken woman.

Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz’s "comedy" becomes an apocalyptic tragedy in Zimmermann's hands. In his opera he depicts a world where the military spirit penetrates the personal sphere, brutalising relationships and rendering them inhuman. A moving testimony to the post-war years which has lost none of its urgency.