About the work
Youth opera in a prologue and 15 scenes by Sebastian Schwab, commissioned by Oper Frankfurt. The German-language libretto is by Kai Weßler, based on the novel of the same name by the Dutch author Brenda Heijnis, published in German in 2023 in Birgit Erdmann's translation by Mixtvision. The world premiere is scheduled for 20 February 2027 at the Bockenheimer Depot.
Plot
Fourteen-year-old skater Boyd falls to his death while riding the railing of a motorway bridge; his heart goes to thirteen-year-old Elias, who has been waiting a long time for a transplant. After the operation Boyd turns up at Elias's hospital bed, visible only to him. Boyd cannot let go because he feels responsible for a fire in his grandfather's shed, and he can only find peace once a photograph rescued from the flames is returned to the grandfather. For the sheltered, anxious Elias, the encounter becomes the push to take responsibility himself.
Cultural significance
Like the novel it is based on, the opera tells a story of organ donation, guilt and growing up from the viewpoints of two very different boys. For Schwab, who had previously written the children's operas Wurst and Holle! with Weßler, it is a work aimed at a teenage audience.