In August 2026, Alte Musik am Bodensee e.V. presents OPERNWAGON with a new production of the Swabian opera Adam & Eve’s Creation.
OPERWAGON
“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 summer 2026, Alte Musik am Bodensee e.V., together with the ensemble Société Lunaire and Kulturzentrale Süd – Knapp Striegel Hutter GmbH, will set the OPERNWAGON in motion: a mobile opera stage that will tour a variety of venues throughout Swabia. Whether in Baroque palaces and churches, on farms, in breweries, or on lively village squares under the open sky, the Opera Wagon transforms every location into a stage and makes opera tangible wherever people gather.
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 the vaulted nave of a church or the rustic charm of a farmyard — become part of the stage design, and a high-quality opera production unfolds directly before people’s eyes and ears.
At these performances, audiences can take a seat on beer benches, bring their own chairs, or enjoy a picnic together while the OPERNWAGON, in the warm glow of a summer evening, invites them on a wonderful musical journey into the Swabian Creation. The performances are planned to be free of charge — donation-based — in order to invite as diverse an audience as possible to dare to experience opera.
ADAM & EVE’S CREATION
Alte Musik am Bodensee e.V. presents a new production of the Swabian opera 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 as an atmospheric open-air production. With replicas of original late-18th-century instruments — flute, harp, viola, and cello — the audience is transported sonically to Swabia in the Classical era.
The high-summer Swabian landscape or the lively marketplace becomes the stage design for this gem of Swabian Classicism, bringing everyone involved into the Swabian Garden of Eden.
Supported by
Martin Butler 