Augustin

The plague is raging in Vienna in 1679 which is worrying for the inhabitants of a nearby village. The tavern is the local meeting place in which everyone has his own way of coming to terms with the catastrophe. Reactions vary between laughter, tears, lies and love. The evening in the tavern develops into a dance on the volcano. Only one of the guests remains carefree and unfazed: Augustin, a universally popular bagpiper and singer. He survived the plague in Vienna because he was not afraid of it. After falling into a ditch in an inebriated state, he is discovered the next morning, loaded onto a cart of dead plague victims, thrown into a pit with the bodies and only saved by chance. Unbelievably, he survives this ordeal and lives to a grand old age, only dying in Vienna in 1702.
Martin Markun‘s libretto omits the grotesque scene with the corpse collectors in the stage play and reduces the dialogues in the tavern to a minimum. He then spreads the plot of the opera over a prelude and three interludes including expansive chorus scenes with dancing and medieval mystery plays which develop almost into incantations. This creates vivid, dramatic scenes bursting with energy in dramatic juxtaposition to the sparseness of the plot with its small number of protagonists.