‘Fire Night’ - a play of the Tyrolean people's theatre

Felix Mitterer returns to Telfs. Herbert Pixner composes — and plays live every evening with his band. However, the real star of the evening is Tyrolean history: with this spectacular world premiere, the Volksschauspiele 2026 bring the continuation of Mitterer’s "Die verkaufte Heimat" about the stories and fates of people in South Tyrol between the late 1930s and the 1960s to the stage for the first time.
“Die Feuernacht” takes place in the early 60s, during the height of the so-called “Bumser,” when South Tyrol found itself in a state of permanent emergency. In the “Feuernacht” from June 11 to 12, 1961, numerous electricity pylons were blown up to attract international attention to the cause of the German-speaking South Tyroleans. Even today, 65 years after the “Feuernacht,” emotions run high regarding the justification or senselessness of these acts.
Is there a historically unjust border? Does it become less unjust simply because time passes? Should we finally stop talking about it? The history of Tyrol contains, apart from this regional trauma, the kind of explosive material that seems familiar from the global history of mankind. It also reflects patterns and dynamics of our present. Did the reasonable forces of the past gradually achieve a far-reaching autonomy status — a prerequisite for transforming the catastrophe into one of the wealthiest regions in the entire EU?
Viewed through a magnifying glass, “Die Feuernacht” examines the people caught up in the conflicts of those times of turmoil and their stories. The mostly demolished South Tyrolean settlement becomes a breathtaking open-air stage for the incomparable sound of Felix Mitterer and Herbert Pixner, for grand opera and small stories amidst the larger history, directed by Thomas Gassner, in a specially crafted stage version by Peter Lorenz — an explosive, captivating theater evening about courage and doubt, responsibility and consequence, flight and home, freedom and identity.
This event takes place only in German!