I am Your Labyrinth

The composer Wolfgang Rihm wrote an artist’s opera: Friedrich Nietzsche’s late hymns to Dionysus, the wild god of the Greeks, are the inspiration and point of departure for his large-scale music theatre work Dionysos - Scenes and Dithyrambs. For Rihm, Nietzsche’s ecstatic poetry and the ancient myths condense into Rihm's dramatic material: “The entire Dionysus-Dithyrambs provide the text; I read them as a kind of theatrical work. The text is mine, every word is Nietzsche’s.”

The film documents the creation of the opera and the rehearsals leading up to its world premiere at the Salzburg Festival in 2010. At the same time it follows Nietzsche’s traces through the mountain landscape of the Engadin, the poet’s chosen home.

The recording of the Salzburg world premiere features Ingo Metzmacher conducting the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Konzertvereinigung Wiener Staatsopernchor. The production was directed by Pierre Audi, with stage design by the artist Jonathan Meese. Johannes Martin Kränzle sings the title role of N.; Mojca Erdmann appears as Ariadne, Matthias Klink as A Guest, and Elin Rombo, Virpi Räisänen and Julia Faylenbogen as Nymphs, Dolphins, Emeralds and Maenads. The actor Uli Kirsch embodies The Skin.