Rudi Stephan's Die ersten Menschen

Rediscover a forgotten work from the early 20th century: Rudi Stephan’s Die ersten Menschen (The First Humans) is performed for the first time at the Dutch National Opera. And while François-Xavier Roth conducts the score in the pit, Calixto Bieito crafts a production of a biblical proportions on stage!

Die ersten Menschen tells the story of the offspring of Adahm (Adam) and Chawa (Eve), according to the narrative of the Book of Genesis, investigating the implicit aspects of the story. Kajin (Cain) et Chabel (Abel) both desire the same (and only) woman: their mother. As a result of the play's disturbing content, the public reacted with scandal in 1920. But Stephan’s opera is above all a psychological representation of human impulses which—in masterful performances by exceptional artists including Kyle Ketelsen, Leigh Melrose, Annette Dasch, and John Osborn—transform the springtime setting of the action into visual and musical poetry. The story of humanity's beginnings seems to evoke Eliot’s famous first line of The Waste Land: April is, indeed, the cruellest month.