Der goldene Hahn

Theater an der Wien, Wien

King Dodon's kingdom is shaken by crises: His enemies are threatening the country, the king himself has grown old and his sons are incapable of ruling. Then an astrologer appears at court and offers the king a golden rooster, which warns of all dangers in good time. When the king goes to war again, he falls in love with the Queen of Shemakha. But now the astrologer demands this very woman as a reward for the rooster. The golden cockerel, which had come to the kingdom as a miraculous bringer of salvation, turns out to be a messenger of disaster, destruction and violence. The end result is the death of the king and a people left helpless by those in power. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's last opera, The Golden Cockerel, composed in 1909 and based on a story by Alexander Pushkin, is a satire on Russian tsarist rule and at the same time tells a fairy tale about power, manipulation and failure. Russian director Maxim Didenko therefore sees the work as a parable on authoritarian systems and the virtual powers of the present, on technical promises of salvation and failed utopias. Rimsky-Korsakov's Solotoi petushok is a work of transition between the fairy-tale operas of the 19th century and the expressionist music theater of the modern era, in which Russian folk music echoes just as much as orientalist music and the orchestral colourfulness of Impressionism. Bass Günther Groissböck will return to the MusikTheater an der Wien in the role of the King.

In Russian with German and English surtitles

Introduction to the work 30 minutes before the start of each performance