The operamiracle of Magdeburg - At the end everything is subsumed by fire.

Olivia Fuchs directed the distant story with discretion. Everyone seems as if they are imprisoned within the dirty-grey walls of the set. Behind windows and doors videos of swaying reeds or paths through countryside promise freedom, and at the end everything is subsumed by flames.

Nicola Turner’s simple costumes intimate clearly the 1930s, which is when the piece was written.

The lively chorus is musically an important protagonist and they are expressively directed by Olivia Fuchs. The production aims to give a great work a compassionate staging – a serious and faithful world premiere, although Fuchs and her set designer Nicola Turner also try to include the circumstances of the writing of the opera. On a discreet video German soldiers march past to a jolly marching tune. Characters and chorus are dressed in the fashion of the 1930s or 1940s, while the harlequin, a member of the travelling players, whom Grete and her lover Valentin will join later, seems to have emerged from a 17th century picture. On the multi-levelled stage there are a few trunks. Engels’ descendants found the score in one of these, in Magdeburg they contain puppets and colourful ribbons in an otherwise drab world.