OPERNWAGON

In August 2026, WE will present THE OPERN-WAGON with a new production of the Swabian opera Adam & Eve’s Erschaffung.

“If 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 the summer of 2026, Alte Musik am Bodensee e.V., together with the ensemble Société Lunaire and Kulturzentrale Süd – Knapp Striegel Hutter GmbH, will therefore set the OPERA-WAGON in motion: a mobile opera stage that will appear at 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 accessible wherever people come together.

With a compact set design and a production directed by Martin Butler the entire production fits into a trailer that can be pulled from village to village.

Audiences can sit on beer benches, bring their own chairs, or picnic together on a warm summer evening . The performances are free of charge to invite as diverse an audience as possible.

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 (Schwäbische Schöpfung, 1743) by the Weißenhorn poet Sebastian Sailer and tells the story from the creation of humankind to the expulsion from Paradise from the perspective of the Swabian rural population.

Three opera singers and four instrumentalists from the ensemble Société Lunaire will present Adam & Eve’s Erschaffung as an playful open-air production using replicas of original late-18th-century instruments, flute, harp, viola and cello.

The high-summer Swabian landscape, becomes the stage for this unique pearl of German Classicism and transporting everyone into the Swabian Garden of Eden.