Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank

A Graphic Opera

Opera from 14

Note: this production depicts topics like war, death, discrimination based on religion, persecution and fleeing.

Anne Frank was thirteen when she and her family hid from the Nazis in a Secret Annex in Amsterdam.

In her diary, she records what moves her: fear and confinement, but also curiosity, longing and first love. Grigory Frid's monodrama follows these notes and makes Anne's voice directly tangible - as a haunting coming-of-age story under the extreme conditions of political persecution.

With his "Graphic Opera", David Bösch develops an independent form of musical theater that combines stage, film and animation. Live performance and projections intertwine and make the diary visible, so to speak: Memories, thoughts and inner images come to the surface. Scenic processes combine with drawings and documentary fragments to form a multi-layered visual language that oscillates between reality and dream logic.

The focus is on the perspective of young Anne. Her perception shapes the world we see: sometimes concrete and observational, sometimes fragmentary and inward. Between confinement and imagination, a visually opulent and intimate theatrical experience unfolds that not only tells history, but makes it tangible.

Grigory Frid's opera is designed as a monodrama: In 21 episodes, a musical portrait unfolds that stays close to the wording of Anne Frank's diary. The score follows internal states rather than external events - a "sound kaleidoscope" of moods, memories and feelings.

Frid combines different compositional techniques: tonal and atonal passages, leitmotifs and clusters stand side by side and create a multi-layered world of sound. Often characterized by dark colors, the music also opens up to fragile, translucent moments.

The singing voice is at the center: it carries the action, alternating between narration and direct experience, between childlike directness and reflective distance. In this way, music becomes the resonance chamber of an inner development - and allows Anne Frank's world of thought to become intensely audible.

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1929 and fled with her family to the Netherlands to escape Nazi persecution. in 1942, the family went into hiding in a Secret Annex in Amsterdam, where Anne began to write her famous diary. In it, she not only describes everyday life in hiding, but also her thoughts, fears and hopes.

After her arrest in 1944, Anne was deported and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Her diary was preserved and published by her father. Today it is one of the most widely read books in the world and has been translated into numerous languages.

Grigory Frid, himself marked by experiences of political repression, began setting the work to music at the end of the 1960s. His opera was premiered in 1972 and is still one of the most haunting musical explorations of Anne Frank's story.

(Source: nest.at)