About the work
“Rummelplatz” is an opera by the German composer Ludger Vollmer based on Werner Bräunig’s novel of the same name, with a libretto by Jenny Erpenbeck. Oper Chemnitz commissioned the work and gave its world premiere on 20 September 2025 as part of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025, staged by Frank Hilbrich and conducted by Benjamin Reiners. It is sung in German; besides more than twenty solo roles it involves the opera chorus and a children’s and youth choir.
Plot
The opera is set between 1949 and 1953 in the Wismut uranium mines of the Ore Mountains. Young people such as the miner Peter Loose, the failed student Christian Kleinschmidt and Ruth Fischer look for stability, meaning and a little pleasure underground and in the everyday life of the early GDR, caught between hopes of a new beginning, gruelling labour and state control. An accident in the shaft, for which culprits are sought, and the events surrounding 17 June 1953 bring the conflicts to a head; an epilogue looks ahead to the end of the Wismut. Erpenbeck’s libretto condenses the roughly 700-page novel into a few main characters and strands.
Cultural significance
Bräunig’s unfinished novel was sharply attacked at the 11th Plenum of the SED Central Committee in 1965 and only appeared posthumously in 2007 from Aufbau-Verlag. In the score Vollmer combines leitmotif technique with workers’ songs, folk songs and musical quotations; critics largely hailed the premiere as a highlight of the Capital of Culture year. The production received an OPER! AWARD in February 2026, and Frank Hilbrich was nominated for it for the Der Faust theatre prize (direction, music theatre).