Hildensaga. Ein Königinnendrama

In its very first lines, “The Song of the Nibelungs” already immortalises the praise-deserving heroes and bold knights, of which “in olden legends is many a marvel told”. The material owes its popularity not only to this Middle High German epic poem, but also to Richard Wagner’s four-part opera cycle and Friedrich Hebbel’s dramatic trilogy, which was written in Vienna. Even today, countless movies and TV series adapt and retell the story of the dragon slayer Siegfried. But this version focusses on two women: the two “Hilds” Brünhild and Kriemhild are deceived by the statesmen Gunther and Hagen, which leads to the vindictive murder of Siegfried and, ultimately, to the demise of the Burgundians. In 2018, the Styrian playwright and linguistic artist Ferdinand Schmalz created JEDERMANN (STIRBT), a reworking of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s morality play “Everyman”, for the Burgtheater. In 2020, he took the Nibelung epic poem in hand for the Worms Festival and transformed it into a “saga of the Hilds”: During the fateful dispute between the two queens Brünhild and Kriemhild in front of Worms Cathedral, Schmalz brings in three Norns who interrupt them – and things take a different turn. Although the heroines take their fate into their own hands, the consequences are no less disastrous. Together, they usher in a bleak twilight of the world.