Mario and the Magician - Premiere / Introduction: 7 pm

A play based on the novella by Thomas Mann

Italy in the 1920s, a family holiday. Instead of relaxation, the family encounters discrimination and nationalism at every turn. A magician - Cipolla - is supposed to provide some distraction. Thomas Mann's novella shows how easily a whole society can be seduced.

Holidays! Italy! Rest! Yet the narrator and his family run into nationalism and discrimination wherever they go. For the children's sake, the holiday continues. A visit to the conjurer Cipolla is meant to bring the escape they are looking for. Cipolla turns out to be a brilliant stage hypnotist who bends the audience to his will. The family watches with fascination and dread as the show takes its course - until the charged atmosphere erupts in a fatal horror.

Thomas Mann's 1929 novella is a psychological portrait of a society that lets itself be seduced by fascism, surrendering responsibility, reason and morality.

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Recommended age: 13 and above