Schiffbau-Halle
«Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have we done to surpass man?»
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) is an exception in the history of philosophy. With THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA, the philosopher of transgression – "I am not a human being, I am dynamite" – left behind a guide to life against all doctrine. Highly complex yet accessible, it is an equally poetic and philosophical work which removes the ground from any interpretation claiming to have penetrated it completely. Indeed, it fundamentally questions the possibility of a correct interpretation. Zarathustra is a wise man who does not erect an intellectual edifice with his ideas. Rather he plants explosives to liberate his audience or to leave them with the void.
Following his musical theater dissensions with Nietzsche's philosophical forerunner Max Stirner and his educator Arthur Schopenhauer, director Sebastian Hartmann transforms what is perhaps Nietzsche's most famous work into an intoxicating and explosive Gesamtkunstwerk for the first time in Zurich.