Die Arabische Nacht

An exceptional night that brings together people who are essentially strangers despite living in the same building. For various reasons, all of them are drawn into the apartment of the ever-sleeping Franziska Dehke and her resolute flatmate Fatima Mansur, which soon becomes a venue of erotic adventures, jealousy and vengefulness. In overlapping monologues, Roland Schimmelpfennig’s play is a theatrical fantasy of escaping the anonymous urban jungle, which speaks to the parallelism of encounters and dreams that send the building’s residents into the kingdom of the Arabian Nights. Christian Jost underscores this loosely woven, somnambulant narrative structure with a shimmering, levitating, iridescent soundscape in his chamber opera, which had its world premiere in 2008 in Essen. This genuine ensemble piece is played by the members of the International Opera Studio at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. With »Arabian Night«, the LINDEN21 series is also conquering a brand new space, the Staatsoper’s Rehearsal Stage 1.