"I believe in entertainment, in grand spectacle, in the overwhelming power of many costumes. Strauss and Hofmannsthal's "Der Rosenkavalier" is a brilliant play, a comedy with profound, heartbreaking moments – not merely a conversation piece, but also filled with great Hollywood moments. The visual world created by Gottfried Helnwein in our production is one of clear structure and consistent colour. Yet the costumes constantly mix periods. It is shrill, full of poetry. Through this strong aesthetic approach, we are not in our own world, nor do we mirror it; rather, we have built a fantasy world with its own rules, with the logic of a dream – a modern dream world with absurd elements such as a man with a rabbit's head or a nightmare figure on stilts... We embark on a journey through time, beginning in a Helnwein-inspired yet distinctly late Rococo world of Maria Theresa. In the second act we leap forward into a somewhat simpler post-Napoleonic era of the nouveau riche Faninal family. In the third act there is a wild mixture of modernity and Rococo. And at the very end, a love dies – and a new one begins..."

Lydia Steier