In October 2026 the second production of Torsten Rasch’s Die wunderbaren Jahre debuts at the Semperoper Dresden, directed by Nora Bussenius and conducted by Christian Blex. The music theatre work for 3 singers, narrator, and chamber ensemble is based on Reiner Kunze’s eponymous 1976 collection of prose vignettes, and receives 10 performances from 16 October, playing at Semper Zwei.
Kunze’s searing account of everyday life growing up in the former East Germany was banned in the GDR, ahead of his expulsion from the Writers’ Union and subsequent exile to the West in 1977. Rasch’s adaptation was acclaimed following its world premiere production at Theater Regensburg in February 2025.
…Rasch has a brilliant idea that fully justifies this musical adaptation…He intersperses the prose with hauntingly arranged songs…an important work…
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jan Brachmann) 26 February 2025
It works well…the music always remains comprehensible, sparkling…the instrumentation is pointed, with well-defined colours and articulation…folksongs provide another perspective in the narrow world of the GDR: hope, longing, a different world…
Süddeutsche Zeitung (Egbert Tholl) 25 February 2025
…A 90-minute emotional rollercoaster ride…an instrumental requiem and an epilogue left the audience deeply affected and moved.
BR-Klassik (Franziska Stürz) 24 February 2025
…an expressionistic language that veers between atonality and freely-employed tonal elements, to which the accordion adds a pinch of the everyday…very apt and striking… this concentrated work had a disturbing effect…[it] was received with focus and unanimous approval.
Neue musikzeitung (Juan Martin Koch) 24 February 2025
Cast in 21 scenes across 90 minutes, Die wunderbaren Jahre examines the inhumanity of a political system that militarizes its young people and tries, in often absurd ways, to control, indoctrinate and break them. The work is scored for an ensemble of nine instruments – flute, clarinet, bassoon, accordion, and string quartet with double bass – and soprano, mezzo-soprano, and bass soloists, with narrator.
Die wunderbaren Jahre follows Rasch’s Rotter (2007) in its exploration of German history and life in the former East Germany. Commissioned by Oper Köln, it featured a libretto by East German dissident writer Thomas Brasch and was directed by Katharina Thalbach, one of Germany’s most celebrated actors - also, like Rasch, from the former GDR. The opera, a biography of the titular ‘Rotter’, paints a picture of a man who is both culprit and victim, exploring the horrors of German fascism and life in East Germany following the end of the war.
Rasch, who grew up in Dresden, felt an affinity with the atmosphere of dissent that permeates Die wunderbaren Jahre. He acquired a copy of the book on a tour to West Germany with the Dresdener Kreuzchor and smuggled back in secret – the choir to whom he returned in 2025 to compose Crux Duplex.
In 2022 the Semperoper commissioned Rasch’s Die andere Frau – a work in ten scenes that retells the biblical story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, to a libretto by Helmut Krausser, and conducted by Michael Wendeberg. Immo Karaman’s innovative production placed the audience in the middle of the action itself, the auditorium lit with video projections.