About the work
Der rote Wal – Ein deutsches Herbstmärchen (The Red Whale – A German Autumn Fairy Tale) is an opera by the brothers Vivan and Ketan Bhatti to a libretto by Markus Winter, known as the rapper Maeckes, who developed the story together with the director Martin G. Berger. Commissioned by the Staatstheater Stuttgart, it premiered at the Stuttgart opera house on 18 June 2025, directed by Berger and conducted by Marit Strindlund. The score combines orchestra, chorus and operatic voices with three rappers, electric guitar, synthesizer, prepared piano and playback, and draws on rock, jazz and musical theatre.
Plot
A school class watches an opera about the Red Army Faction, and the pupil Isi merges with Gladis, a female orca who wants to make humanity pay for destroying the oceans. The tech billionaire Lone offers her 24 hours in human form in exchange for one of her fins. As a young woman in Stuttgart she is drawn into protests and meets the underground fighters Abad and Ge, behind whom Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin can be glimpsed, and takes part in an attack on the aquarium of a luxury restaurant. In the end she breaks with her comrades and calls on the Leviathan.
Cultural significance
The piece interweaves the German Autumn of 1977 and the Stammheim trial, partly through sound recordings from the 1970s, with present-day forms of protest and asks where resistance turns into violence, with allusions to Melville's Moby-Dick, mermaid fairy tales and Hobbes's Leviathan. The Stuttgart premiere audience responded with standing ovations, while critics were more divided: Die Deutsche Bühne acknowledged the craftsmanship but found the language banal and missed depth. In 2027 Theater Bielefeld presents the opera in a production of its own.