Benjamin Button

In 1860, Benjamin Button saw the light of day in Baltimore not as a sweet little boy, but as a bearded old man. His fate is predetermined: He goes through life backwards and gets younger every day. When he finally meets Hildegarde, who is almost thirty years younger, at the age of fifty, everything is at stake for him, as he has so far been ostracised by society due to his special circumstances and has never been loved. His love for Hildegarde cannot last, for while she ages inexorably, Benjamin grows younger and younger until he finally becomes a baby in his own son's house.

It was the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald who reported this incident in a whimsical and original short story from 1922. In 2008 it was successfully filmed with Brad Pitt in the leading role. Now Reinhard Febel, who worked for many years as a composition professor at the Salzburg Mozarteum, has adapted this humorous and impressive reflection on the phenomena of time, identity, age, youth, becoming and passing for the opera stage.