Independent Opera
'Biedermann and the Arsonists' Trailer, November 2015
"Don’t you know the thrill that fire has to offer? The first feeble flames, the sirens in the distance, the howling of dogs, the ear piercing screams…and ashes."
Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells marks its 10th year with the UK premiere of Šimon Voseček’s Biedermann and the Arsonists, based on the classic absurdist play by Swiss dramatist and novelist Max Frisch, in a new translation by David Pountney.
The production is directed by the 2015 Independent Opera Director Fellow Max Hoehn. Timothy Redmond conducts the Britten Sinfonia, and Mark Le Brocq and Leigh Melrose head a superb cast including some of the finest UK-trained singers.
Frisch’s provocative parable of middle class life follows the downfall of the complacent and weak-willed Gottlieb Biedermann, a successful businessman faced with the arrival of two sinister strangers in his attic.
Conductor Timothy Redmond
Director Max Hoehn
Designer Jemima Robinson
Lighting Designer Giuseppe di Iorio
Video Designer Daniel Denton
Orchestra Britten Sinfonia
Biedermann Mark Le Brocq
Babette Alinka Kozari
Schmitz Leigh Melrose
Eisenring Matthew Hargreaves
Anna Raphaela Papadakis
Firemen Adam Sullivan, Johnny Herford, Bradley Travis
Policeman Laurence North
UK première by Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells at the Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler’s Wells, London, 14 November 2015