Big Opera. Small Stage. At the Heart of commUnity.

A mobile opera stage brings historical music to unexpected places across the swabian region

4 locations. 4 days. 1300 visiters. free Entrance

“When the audience cannot come to the theatre, the theatre must come to the audience.”

The tradition of touring theatre is as old as theatre itself. All it needs is a space — indoors or outdoors — an attentive audience, and something worth seeing.

In August 2026, Alte Musik am Bodensee e.V., together with the ensemble Société Lunaire and Kulturzentrale Süd – Knapp Striegel Hutter GmbH, set the OPERNWAGON in motion: a mobile opera stage that toured a variety of rural towns throughout Swabia.

With a compact set design and a production directed by Martin Butler the entire production fits into a trailer that can be towed from village to village. At each venue, the surroundings — whether village square, castle courtyard, the vaulted nave of a church or the rustic farmyard — become part of the stage design, and a high-quality opera production unfolded, making opera tangible wherever people gather.

At these performances, audiences could take a seat, bring their own chairs, or enjoy a picnic together while the OPERNWAGON, in the warm glow of a summer evening, invited them on a musical journey into the Swabian Creation.

ADAM & EVE’S CREATION

This unique comic chamber opera in the Swabian dialect was composed in 1796 by Meingosus Gaelle, the “Mozart of Meckenbeuren.” It is based on The Swabian Creation (Die Schwäbische Schöpfung, 1743) by the Weißenhorn poet Sebastian Sailer and tells the story of the creation of humankind through to the expulsion from Paradise from the perspective of the Swabian rural population.

Three opera singers and four instrumentalists from the ensemble Société Lunaire present Adam & Eve’s Creation with replicas of original late-18th-century instruments — flute, harp, viola, and cello.

The high-summer landscape became the stage design for an atmospheric open-air production, a gem of Swabian Classicism, bringing everyone involved into the Garden of Eden.