Station Paradiso

Which sounds evoke feelings of home in us? What music do we associate with the places where we have lived our lives? Can a rummaged-out LP sleeve, a cassette box, an aging CD bring memories to life across countries and generations? With questions like these in mind, Croatian composer Sara Glojnarić started a “sound archive of the future“ two years ago as a collection of material for her compositions. In personal conversations and listening sessions with people who have settled in the Stuttgart area since the 1950s, she has since uncovered long-forgotten memories and created an intergenerational songbook of the city: “I want to start where the history books stop – to tell the story in all its splendor, humor and realness. From the perspective of an insider who understands this very special feeling of an emotional balancing act between what we call home and where we are now.“ In a team with Bosnian writer Tanja Šljivar and director Anika Rutkofsky, Glojnarić weaves these immigration stories full of nostalgia and dreams, tragedy and comedy, rituals and linguistic diversity into a poetic-surreal mixtape opera. Together, they take us on a kind of road trip along the former Europastraße 5, a nightly transit route that forms a bridge between the cultural identities of Germany and south-eastern Europe and at the same time symbolizes the longing for belonging. An opera about the timeless utopian power of music as cultural memory. An opera about Stuttgart and from Stuttgart, composed for the state orchestra and ensemble of the Staatsoper Stuttgart, including Goran Jurić and Diana Haller, whose personal musical memories of the journey to Stuttgart will be experienced on stage as flashbacks.