MEDIATHEK

1816 - The year without Summer

The 1816 is known as the „year without a summer„ in the climate history, a year in which many parts of the world appeared an uncomfortable and above all very cool summer. 1817 became the year of hunger, thousands emigrated. Blame the massive eruption of Tambora volcano was (Indonesia) in April 1815.

The concept of this performance is to create a accessible theatre.

The common thread is the setting of a poem by Lord Byron „The darkness„  (1816) for mixed choir.To this poem swirling around the events of 1816: alarmist, starving people in Europe, explosion of food prices, which defend a their belongings, others relieve with first social institutions in need. A literary circle on Lake Geneva organized a ghost story competition with the emergence of the Frankenstein myth of Mary Shelley and the poem „Darkness„ by Lord Byron. Central Europe had a refugee disaster.

Germans become economic fugitive and they flee to neighboring countries, or emigrate to America.

The ensemble is European. The artists come from Germany, Belgium, England and Slovakia. In the famine of 1816, all these countries were affected. Now we are together called upon to welcome the starving and persecuted strangers from Africa and the Middle East into our society. That's why we have to keep telling us how the Europeans have done in the past.