Guillaume Tell

In 1829, a musical revolution took place in Paris when Gioachino Rossini premiered his opera Guillaume Tell. This work unfolds an unprecedented spectrum of expression - in the truest sense of the word: Idyllic depictions of nature are juxtaposed with rousing choral scenes, internalized solo songs of touching emotionality meet passages bursting with energy. And so Rossini always finds exactly the right tone to bring Friedrich Schiller's popular drama about the Swiss struggle for freedom to the music theater stage. In view of this gripping music, every time we encounter Rossini's Guillaume Tell, we regret anew that the composer did not write another opera after this work in the 39 years that followed until his death in 1868.

In his production for the Linz Landestheater, Georg Schmiedleitner expands the struggle of occupied Switzerland against its brutal oppressors into an examination of the ever-present questions surrounding the emergence and functional mechanisms of radical movements.