My first time ... at the Bernhard Theatre

For the opening of the 2025/26 season at Zurich Opera House, the new artistic director Matthias Schulz has designated the opera house’s ‘little brother’ – the Bernhard Theatre – as a laboratory for unconventional musical theatre evenings. However, the evening ‘Wie du warst! Wie du bist!’ by the Danish director, composer and artist Simon Steen-Andersen is much more than a laboratory for the unconventional: it is a journey into the inner world of the opera singer Liliana Nikiteanu. She has been performing on the stage of the Zurich Opera House for more than thirty years and, not long ago, spoke about her eventful career in the theatre’s own podcast.

But back to the Bernhard Theatre. So I settle into one of those wonderfully nostalgic red armchairs and wonder what might be in store for me here this evening. How will this theatre space be transformed into a stage for musical theatre?

Out of the darkness, I hear a whimpering, simmering sound coming from the speakers. The intensity grows until I realise it is the humming of the singer Liliana Nikiteanu. She is humming an old Romanian song. In contrast, as if conjured up from the underground, a dark, electronic, almost motor-like flicker sounds out, a dull shimmer. The curtain opens and I see the reflection of the audience at the Bernhard Theatre – my own reflection. The curtain closes.

Where are we? Are we already part of the stage experience? Is it a call to the audience to participate?

Over the sounds of the organ, played by musical director Stefan Schreiber, the first lines of the grand opera playing on the main stage of the opera house next door resound: the opening phrases of Octavian, the Rosenkavalier. Liliana Nikiteanu gently embraces the drawn curtain, onto which historical black-and-white video footage of Der Rosenkavalier is projected. She embraces her former character of Octavian and, in doing so, takes on the role of the Marschallin, an ageing, magnificent woman who faces the changing times.

In this production, Simon Steen-Andersen gets to know his protagonist through an in-depth interview, which we, the audience, follow on screen. Steen-Andersen and Nikiteanu sit in her dressing room, where he asks her personal questions about her career, her private life, but also her role as a woman and as a singer. Liliana reflects very thoughtfully on the past and the future. She has grown old in this opera house, yet she has never been to the Bernhard Theatre.

Steen-Andersen takes us on a visual journey into the heart of the theatre, behind the scenes, down to the understage, where we encounter Liliana Nikiteanu time and again in various roles: As a sinister figure uttering curses and incantations in the deepest recesses of the building, or as the guardian of ancient tales and a larger-than-life figure. On various levels of the interior – be it Liliana Nikiteanu or the depths of the building – we as the audience find ourselves, over the course of the evening, increasingly drawn to a longing for the primordial. What lies in the unconscious, there where we cease to search?

Liliana Nikiteanu talks about the revolution in Romania, how she fled the country, and how she was able to fulfil her dream of becoming a singer in Switzerland. At the same time, Steen-Andersen shows old footage from *Züri brennt!* from the 1980s. We see, in turn, a kaleidoscope of revolution and uprising.

It is a relief when Steen-Andersen musically reveals to us the innermost, deepest point of the building and we conclude our journey into its interior. I won’t reveal how here. Yet just as the red curtains of the Bernhard Theatre open and close for us this evening, so the vocal cords of the famous opera singer Liliana Nikiteanu vibrate on the big screen for us, and we sing live with her in a duet – that is, she with herself – the final duet from *Der Rosenkavalier*: ‘It is a dream, it cannot really be.’

The revival of the play “Wie du warst! Wie du bist!” is scheduled for July 2026. Secure your tickets now.