Wollte ich Liebe singen - Franz Schubert

We would like to cordially invite you to a very special song recital: singer Elena Patsalidou and pianist Olga Bille, together with actor and director Johannes Gärtner, present a brilliant and moving performance of Franz Schubert, the composer and the man.

The idea: Schubert must appear. A concert program becomes "concerttheater" - a genuine CERCA DIO production: the composer is on everyone's lips - whether devoutly breathed or boldly whistled. But what kind of person is Franz Schubert that interests us today? There is plenty of room for speculation. Only a few letters and diary entries have come down to us from him. Someone who had his problems with the changeover, who was plagued by incessant money worries and bruised by publishers, who was admired by the ladies and yet only loved from afar. Schubert the yearning lover is evident in many of his songs. But what about his family, politics, the writer and, above all, his circle of friends from which the Schubertiades emerged? And what was the illness that had such a decisive impact on his life?

The attempt to encircle Schubert, to surround the blank spots of his life and longing with his songs and texts. The result is a collaboration with the actor, who first has to learn to listen, who gets to know Schubert's songs through his letters. An evening about the female characters in Schubert's songs developed into a scenic song recital with his letters and diary entries. A portrait of Franz Schubert the man, which should enable us to look into the rich emotional world of his songs. "If I wanted to sing love, it became pain for me, if I wanted to sing pain, it became love for me" - many of the almost 600 songs may seem incomprehensible to us, even sentimental, but in the context of his texts they take on a whole new face. Research has shown that no other composer's words and tone harmonize as well as Franz Schubert's. And hardly anyone is as moving - as a composer and as a person.