World première of "The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz"

New work exclusively distributed by Schott Music: Stefan Heucke's music theatre The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz

Music as a form of compulsory labour - music as a life-saver: In the years 1943/44, the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau had a women’s orchestra consisting of professional and amateur musicians from different European countries. The conductor was the then worldfamous violinist Alma Rosé, niece of the composer Gustav Mahler. The orchestra had to play when prisoners arrived at the camp but also at so-called selections, in the Hospital and Experimental Blocks. For the entertainment of the SS camp personnel and the concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele, the orchestra gave concerts with works by Schubert, Schumann, Puccini, Suppé and Strauß. Although the women literally played for their life, they were at the same time among the ‘privileged’ prisoners of the camp. Some of them survived, among them Fania Fénelon, a Jewish singer from Paris. She died in France in 1983, leaving an autobiographical novel which describes the desperate fight against the musicians’ fear of death. Based on motives of this novel, Stefan Heucke composed his opera The Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, the
libretto was written by his brother Clemens Heucke. The composer looks into the feelings, emotions and behaviour of people who were forced to make music while facing death.

This premiere is funded by the Werner Richard - Dr. Carl Dörken Foundation (Herdecke), the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the Fonds Neues Musiktheater of the NRW Kultursekretariat in Wuppertal, and the Circles of Friends of the Krefeld-Mönchengladbach theatre.