Heimkehr

What happens when people believe in goodness despite all the harshness of society?
“Heimkehr” tells the story of two young people whose journey takes them through the abysses of the 19th and 20th centuries and raises questions that have lost none of their urgency to this day.
At the heart of the work is Hans Werner Henze’s intensely expressive musical setting of a monologue by Prince Myshkin from Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot,” rendered in poetic language by Ingeborg Bachmann. Myshkin, driven by compassion and humanity, ultimately fails in a world that leaves no room for his kindness.
This is contrasted by a text written specifically for JCOM by the Hungarian author Lajos Parti-Nagy, inspired by Imre Kertész’s “Fateless.” Drawing on the experiences of Shoah survivors returning home to a society unwilling to confront its own past and complicity, a conversation unfolds about memory and repression, belonging and alienation, and the question of how a homecoming can be possible when nothing is as it was before.
The music composed for this evening by Judit Varga weaves the scenes together into a haunting whole.
“Homecoming” combines musical theater, drama, and literature into an extraordinary stage experience full of intensity and emotional power.