WEBVTT 00:00:04.920 --> 00:00:10.600 »The Woman without a Shadow« is a fairy tale. A fairy tale for adults. A bit like »The Magic Flute«. 00:00:10.600 --> 00:00:21.720 There is the simple couple, like Papageno and Papagena, and then there is the high couple, »Kaiserin« and »Kaiser«, like Tamino and Pamina. 00:00:21.720 --> 00:00:28.840 Every couple goes through a test in this piece. 00:00:29.160 --> 00:00:37.080 I would also really say that there are three couples in this piece: there is the »Kaiser« and the »Kaiserin«, the dyer and his wife, and there is the nurse and the »Kaiserin«. 00:00:37.320 --> 00:00:45.320 What I find interesting about the »Kaiserin« is the development she makes. 00:00:47.040 --> 00:00:50.600 She is the person who goes through the piece and learns, so to speak. 00:00:50.600 --> 00:01:00.480 What is empathy, what is love, what is jealousy, what is envy. 00:01:00.720 --> 00:01:09.360 At the end, when the »Kaiserin« separates from the nurse, she says that she wants to stay here. 00:01:09.640 --> 00:01:23.400 The nurse is a traveler between the worlds. This becomes very clear in the very first scene when she talks about her experiences in the human world. 00:01:23.400 --> 00:01:28.440 There's a wonderful passage in Act 3 where she says: 00:01:28.720 --> 00:01:33.680 »Swarming like eels. Screeching like eagles, fouling the earth!« 00:01:33.960 --> 00:01:53.360 From a current political perspective, it can't be completely denied. What I find interesting about this piece is also this different view of what a human being is at this point in time. 00:01:53.360 --> 00:01:59.680 The play is often seen as an emancipation piece of women. 00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:11.160 We still ask ourselves this question every day, even though it is now 2024 and not 1919, when the play came out. 00:02:11.160 --> 00:02:29.760 I find it very interesting that two men, again, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, created a kind of »women’s opera« together. 00:02:29.760 --> 00:02:48.360 The play is so rich that when you put it on stage, you have to make a decision. Do I want to focus on relationships, do I want to focus on the question: What is being human? What does it mean to be human? 00:02:48.360 --> 00:03:00.840 I think the message of the piece is still that as a person you are what you make of yourself and also in relationships.