About the work
“Peter van Pels” is an opera in three parts by the German composer Anno Schreier to a German-language libretto by Joscha Schaback. The work was commissioned by Theater Osnabrück in the title character's home town; the world premiere took place on 19 September 2026 at the Theater am Domhof, staged by Ulrich Mokrusch and conducted by Benjamin Huth, with Florian Wugk in the title role.
Plot
The opera follows the life of Peter van Pels, who was born in Osnabrück in 1926 and fled with his parents from the Nazis to Amsterdam in 1937. From July 1942 the family lived with the Franks in hiding in the Secret Annex on the Prinsengracht, where Anne Frank and Peter fell in love. The libretto tells the story known from Anne's diary from Peter's point of view and divides it into many short scenes that lead from Osnabrück through the Amsterdam hiding place to the camps. After the arrest in August 1944 Peter was deported via Westerbork to Auschwitz and died in 1945, aged 18, in the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Cultural significance
The premiere fell in the year in which Peter van Pels would have turned 100; the theatre accompanied it with school projects, a matinee in the Osnabrück synagogue and a commemoration of his birthday on 8 November. Die Deutsche Bühne praised the careful staging and the ensemble, especially Florian Wugk, but felt that the score, modelled on the popular music of the period, only partly captures the confinement and mortal fear of the hiding place.