About the work
Krieg. Stell dir vor, er wäre hier (War. What If It Were Here?) is a chamber opera by Marius Felix Lange for audiences aged 14 and over, commissioned by the Junge Oper Stuttgart. The libretto is by the Danish author Janne Teller, based on her book of the same name, with interspersed poems by Nora Gomringer; it is sung in German. Elena Tzavara directed the world premiere on 27 April 2018 at Stuttgart's Kammertheater, performed by a soprano, a baritone, a speaker and a string quartet from the Staatsorchester Stuttgart.
Plot
The piece plays out a thought experiment: Europe's democracies have failed, authoritarian regimes are in power and war has come to Germany. A German family flees to Egypt, where they are safe but, as strangers from the north, hardly welcome, and they spend two years in a refugee camp. When the war finally ends after years and return becomes possible, the children have grown up and find themselves caught between two worlds.
Cultural significance
Teller first wrote the text in 2001 for a Danish newspaper during a debate about refugees; in 2004 it came out as a book designed like a passport, and for the German edition of 2011 she moved the setting to Germany. The chamber opera carries this reversal of the familiar refugee perspective into music theatre for young audiences and has been taken up by other houses since Stuttgart, among them Oper Graz in 2023.