In a village in the far north of Sweden, two young boys grow up side by side—playmates who could scarcely be more different. The mother of the radiant “sunshine” Johannes is a cold and scandal-marked outsider, while the mother of the reserved first-person narrator is firmly anchored within the fabric of society. When the children are six years old, the Supreme Court rules that they were switched at birth.
Stripped of their familial identities, each child must henceforth live with the other’s mother. This act of judicial violence plunges all involved into misfortune and madness. In an existence rendered unbearable, the narrator seeks refuge in a world of imagination. He descends into the library aboard Captain Nemo’s submarine, the Nautilus—drawn from Jules Verne’s novel The Mysterious Island.
Commissioned and co-produced with the Schwetzingen SWR Festival Supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation
PREMIERE 27 July 2022 – 8.00 p.m. Werkstattbühne
Opera (2021)
Libretto by Julia Hochstenbach
Based on Per Olov Enquist’s novel of the same name
