King Arthur

Love in times of war: Even before the legendary British king establishes his famous Round Table, he must liberate Britain from Saxon occupation. Victory for the war-weary Britons seems close at hand when Arthur's adversary Oswald kidnaps the clever, blind Emmeline, Arthur's great love. A chase through an enchanted, ghost-inhabited forest begins. Arthur must navigate his way through a web of illusions to reach his final battle with Oswald.

The series of interdisciplinary theater productions at the Tiroler Landestheatercontinueswith the successful adaptation of Purcell's semi-operaKing Arthur by the renowned Upper Austrian author Ewald Palmetshofer. The new adaptation of King Arthur "follows the plot structure of the original text, but attempts to enrich the characters and their conflicts from a contemporary perspective, reemphasizing them and freeing them from their historical patina," according to the author. Tyrolean composer Kenneth Winkler has recomposed the musical material, reducing Purcell's music to its quintessence, rethinking it in combination with electronic textures, and transferring it to a sound engineering setup that enables innovative possibilities for sound design.

At the Tyrolean State Theater, actors, singers, and dancers search together for a way out of the maze that seems to lead people again and again into cruel disputes and violent conflicts. In a play with illusions, reality, myth, and fairy tales flow into one another—poetically and truthfully.