Artes Jari

In our time, the human community is characterized by great inner tensions that repeatedly break out in divisions and violent conflicts. Finding political consensus seems almost impossible. The chamber opera "The Prodigal Father" explores this observation in philosophical and psychological terms, drawing on the famous chapter "The Grand Inquisitor" from Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880). In it, Jesus returns at the time of the Inquisition and is confronted in the dungeon by the Grand Inquisitor, who wants to burn him as a heretic. The text can initially be understood primarily as a critique of the church, but at the same time it opens up a deeper perspective on the entire social climate in the European cultural area: the 19th century in the Occident is shaken by a crisis of faith and orientation.