Station Paradiso, by Sara Glojnarić - 02.12.2026, 19:30 – 21:20

Libretto by Tanja Šljivar (Research and Assistance for Libretto: Mina Milošević) based on interviews between Sara Glojnarić and Sara Alterio, Ivana Andjelic, Marijan Bernardić, Davide Durante, Goran Jurić, Sezen Kaçar, Milenko Moćiljanin, Aleksandar Radojčić, Sophia Sadzakov, Sara Tomšić
Translation by Mascha Dabić
in Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Italian, Turkish and German with German and English surtitles

Station Paradiso is an opera about the town of Stuttgart and the people who live here. It tells the stories of nine people who set off together on a road trip heading south. The price for the journey: a song. Nostalgia and dreams, tragedies and comic situations, rituals and linguistic diversity – it all comes together in a poetic, surreal mixtape opera. Croatian composer Sara Glojnarić met people who all have settled in the Stuttgart area since the 1950s – and she listened to them. The result is a cross-generational songbook of the City. Can an old, dusted-off LP sleeve bring memories to life across countries and generations? Station Paradiso seeks a sense of feeling at home in all these stories that are set between the Stuttgart bus station, Anatolia and Naples. Stories that have never before been told on an opera stage.

#StgtStationParadiso

Location
Opernhaus

Duration
approx. 1 h 50 min (no interval)

World premiere
May 10, 2026 in Stuttgart

Recommended age
from grade 8

There will be a German introduction 45 minutes before the performance at the Upper Foyer (I. Rang).

Introductory matinee on “Station Paradiso“ on April 26, 2026

Advance ticket sales for all announced performances of the 2026/27 season begin on July 13, 2026, at 10 a.m. Tickets will be available online, at the box office, and by phone at +49 711 20 20 90 starting at that time.

The composition is sponsored by

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May 2026

Sun

18:00 – 19:50
Opernhaus

World Premiere

Cast

Thu

15:00 – 16:50
Opernhaus

For families, Stuzubis 10 € already on presale!, afternoon

8 / 17 / 26 / 40 / 53 / 66 / 82 / 99 / 115 €

Tickets

Cast

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Sun

18:00 – 19:50
Opernhaus

8 / 18,50 / 29 / 43 / 58 / 72 / 90 / 108 / 126 €

Tickets

Cast

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Sun

18:00 – 19:50
Opernhaus

8 / 18,50 / 29 / 43 / 58 / 72 / 90 / 108 / 126 €

Tickets

Cast

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Jun 2026

Mon

19:30 – 21:20
Opernhaus

8 / 17 / 26 / 40 / 53 / 66 / 82 / 99 / 115 €

Tickets

Cast

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Sat

19:00 – 20:50
Opernhaus

8 / 18,50 / 29 / 43 / 58 / 72 / 90 / 108 / 126 €

Tickets

Cast

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Thu

19:00 – 20:50
Opernhaus

8 / 17 / 26 / 40 / 53 / 66 / 82 / 99 / 115 €

Tickets

Cast

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Sun

19:00 – 20:50
Opernhaus

For the last time this season

8 / 18,50 / 29 / 43 / 58 / 72 / 90 / 108 / 126 €

Tickets

Cast

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Nov 2026

Sun

18:00 – 19:50
Opernhaus

First performance this season

8-139 € / E

Tickets available from presale start

Cast

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Dec 2026

Wed

19:30 – 21:20
Opernhaus

8-126 € / D

Tickets available from presale start

Cast

Musikalische Leitung Peter Rundel
Regie Anika Rutkofsky
Bühne Christina Schmitt
Kostüme Adrian Stapf
Video Manuela Hartel
Choreografie Janine Grellscheid
Licht Volker von Schwanenflügel
Sound-Design Paul Hauptmeier, Martin Recker
Dramaturgie Johanna Mangold, Julia Schmitt

Busfahrer Goran Jurić
Braut Josefin Feiler
Yugo-Vater Andrew Bogard
Yugo-Tochter Diana Haller
Neapolitaner Joseph Tancredi
türkischer Vater Ziad Nehme
türkische Tochter Fanie Antonelou
süditalienische Mutter Stine Marie Fischer
süditalienische Tochter Martina Mikelić
singende Tante Mari(j)a Carole Wilson
kochende Tante Mari(j)a Loretta Petti
Staatsorchester Stuttgart

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Thu

19:30 – 21:20
Opernhaus

8-126 € / D

Tickets available from presale start

Cast

Download iCal

Fri

19:00 – 20:50
Opernhaus

For the last time this season

8-139 € / E

Tickets available from presale start

Cast

Download iCal

Synopsis

INTRO
Inside the driver’s realm. His den is archive, work-shop and underworld at once – a factory of memories. He collects audio tapes from his passengers. Music is his sustenance.

I. STUTTGART
Nine people. Waiting at the bus station in Stuttgart. Sultry heat. Noise. Urgency. Their longing: a journey. Perhaps a return. The driver explains his system: a ticket in exchange for a song.

II. LIKA / WINTERBACH
The journey begins. And soon disappears from the map. Places shift. Landscapes merge that do not belong together. The bus becomes a time capsule.

III. NAPLES
An Italian mother. With her adult daughter. Between them: a cassette tape with the voice of the grandmother. And a past that cannot be rewound.

IV. SLAVONIA
A bride. On her own. Travelling to a land she only knows from memories and her parents’ stories. Driven by desires that are not her own. A life that seems already written.

V. NAPLES
A son, a Neapolitan. He carries a secret underneath his jacket. Home as his final wish. And a chorus of Aunt Mari(j)as: memories are preserved, sealed away. In a jar. In a song.

VI. PETROL STATION — BREAK
The driver stops for a break. A choir recalls: Assembly line. Laundry. Daimler. Work in rhythm. Singing to ward off exhaustion. A break as a means of survival.

VII. ANTALYA
A Turkish father. Deep in grief. With his daughter. His memory is fading. And in his gaze: his dead son. In his ear: a song he has forbidden himself to listen to. About worries and about life.

VIII. PASSPORT CONTROL
At the border, at the borders. Papers. Names. Origin. Questions about identity and cigarette smuggling. The daughter translates. She always has had to.

IX. YUGOSLAVIA
A Yugo daughter. In search of herself. And a father who travels with her, in reverse. Into the former Yugoslavia, between romance, jealousy and the curtains for the dream house that has never been finished.

X. WINTERBACH / LIKA
Sleep. Dream. Transition. The driver is awake. He takes them across. Not just across countries. But also across times.

XI. CHIST’È ’O PAESE D’ ’O SOLE
Arrival. Stuttgart again. The dead have traveled. The living, too. A city emerges layer by layer: memory upon memory. And somewhere in between: a table already set. A taste of home.

About the characters

In “Station Paradiso“, an unnamed bus driver takes his colorful group of travelers on a night journey south. Instead of a ticket, he asks each passenger to sing a song from their homeland – and collects them all in an archive brimming with memories and melancholy. But who exactly is sitting in this bus of longing? Here, you have the opportunity to get to know the driver and his passengers better!

The driver

The “Jugo-Schwabo“ came to Germany as a migrant from the former Yugoslavia to survive, and makes a living partly through legal driving services and partly through smuggling. He holds a German passport, but his heart remains in his homeland. Through the repeated ritual of demanding a song in exchange for a fare, he collects, organizes, and archives – like some kind of spiritual guide – the lost memories of his fellow passengers – and ultimately his own as well.

The bride

The young bride is the voice of a generation that – in search of itself – oscillates between nostalgia for home and life in contemporary Germany. She has never felt like she belonged and has had many conflicts with her mother, who stayed in their host country longer than planned back then. Now she has run away, carrying her Aunt Marija’s wedding dress in her luggage, and is filled with a longing for a homeland in the Balkans that she knows only from a few vacation visits.

The Yugo Father

In reality, he is in a nursing home in Stuttgart. On this journey, however, he encounters his daughter in the form of his younger self – the version of him who, with his “rock“ attitude, rubbed people the wrong way in socialist Yugoslavia and therefore set off for Germany with his guitar, in search of freedom. But his music career stalled: he worked in construction and moved to the suburbs with his German wife and child. The dream of his homeland, however, remained.

The Yugo Daughter

She is a successful career woman who speaks German and Croatian without an accent and has worked hard to carve out her place in life through diligence and discipline. Although she used to be a daddy’s girl, she is annoyed by her father’s nostalgia and questions his romanticized fantasies of returning home. But now she has spontaneously hopped on the bus to go to his hometown – because even though she doesn’t want to admit it, a part of his longing lives within her too.

The Turkish Father

He came to Stuttgart from Anatolia in the early 1980s to give his family a better life. Two years later, his wife moved to Germany, and his eldest daughter followed two years after that – which is why his bond with her was never very close. He is a romantic and listened to Orhan Gencebay’s music for many years to ease his homesickness. Today, those cassettes are locked away in his suitcases, and he himself lives in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. Now his daughter is traveling with him to his old homeland before he forgets that too.

The Turkish Daughter

As a child, the 46-year-old was initially left by her parents with her authoritarian grandmother in Anatolia and was only brought to Stuttgart when her brother was born there. As a teenager, she rebelled against her strict mother. Her brother was always her parents’ favorite; after his death, her father developed Alzheimer’s. She cannot talk to her parents about her homosexuality. Nevertheless, she loves her father very much, visits him – dressed as her brother – at the nursing home, and sings Gencebay songs to him.

The Mother from Southern Italy

Having grown up in poverty in southern Italy, she worked in a laundry in Germany until she retired – her daughter accompanied her to work because there was no childcare available. Although she came to Germany a long time ago, she never really learned the language. Originally, she was a seamstress, like her husband from Naples, but she had to give up her craft to work in the laundry. On her journey back home, she is now accompanied by her daughter.

The Daughter from Southern Italy

She is in her 30s and, in almost every respect, the opposite of her mother. She is modern, politically active, and frustrated with the German government, which didn’t even offer her mother a German language course to help her integrate better. She sees the dreams her mother gave up for life in Germany and holds it against her. This trip together is now meant to mend their strained mother-daughter relationship.

The Neapolitan

The Neapolitan was born in Stuttgart and is now in his 40s. He is single, shy and anxious by nature – his father always thought he wasn’t manly enough. He knows his father’s hometown of Naples from family vacations as a child, but he has always found the city and the people there intimidating. Today was his father’s funeral, and he stole the urn to take it by bus to Naples, where his father had always wanted to return.

The Composer

Of course, the composer isn’t a passenger herself – and yet, together with her librettist Tanja Šljivar and many residents of Stuttgart, she has sent the characters on their journey. In personal interviews, she spoke with numerous people who shared their experiences with migration within their families. Some of these stories have been incorporated into the development of the characters in her “mixtape opera“, lending them a very special authenticity.

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Station Paradiso

A mixtape opera about the yearning for home

Listen in and join in: The Station Paradiso playlist