Dichter zu Gast – Claudio Magris
Claudio Magris Verstehen Sie mich bitte recht

In German

In collaboration with Graf & Frey and the Salzburg Global Seminar

CAST

Senta Berger

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

Claudio Magris re-invents the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice: a woman wishes to remain in an old people’s home, although her husband would like to have her return home. Although she loves him above all else, she suspects his motives for wanting her back. For he is a poet, and she assumes he would basically like to find out what goes on behind the closed doors of the home, who the mysterious president is, who are the no less mysterious inhabitants. Because she loves her husband, she wants to spare him the truth. – A tale that oscillates between lightheartedness and tragedy, between everyday descriptions of normal marriage and deep drama.

Claudio Magris, born in the Italian city of Trieste, is one of Italy’s most important experts on German literature and writers on current cultural matters and one of the best-known literati and essayists in Europe. Up to the time of his retirement as Professor for German Language and Literature at the University of Trieste he supervised translations of many German writing authors, including Joseph Roth, Arthur Schnitzler and Georg Büchner. As an essayist and columnist, he is a frequent contributor to the Corriere della Sera, commenting on domestic and foreign affairs. From 1994 to 1996 he was a member of the Roman Senate, representing the region of Trieste as an independent member of a leftist association. In 2002, along with Umberto Eco and other personalities from the fields of art and culture, he founded the association “Libertà e Giustizia” (Freedom and Justice), in order to take a critical stance towards the politics of Silvio Berlusconi.
He first came to international attention with the publication of his dissertation in 1963 on The Hapsburg Myth in Modern Austrian Literature. His essay Trieste, a European Literary Capital and his book Danube: a sentimental journey from the source to the Black Sea attracted a larger reading public.Claudio Magris re-invents the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice: a woman wishes to remain in an old people’s home, although her husband would like to have her return home. Although she loves him above all else, she suspects his motives for wanting her back. For he is a poet, and she assumes he would basically like to find out what goes on behind the closed doors of the home, who the mysterious president is, who are the no less mysterious inhabitants. Because she loves her husband, she wants to spare him the truth. – A tale that oscillates between lightheartedness and tragedy, between everyday descriptions of normal marriage and deep drama.