THE CONTRABASS

PATRICK SÜSKIND
THE CONTRABAS
Drama

A lonely man drinks and rants - about his job as an orchestral musician, about the vocation of music, about the nature of art, and about love. The bitter, self-centered complainer hates his instrument because he believes it has made him a loser, but he can't get away from it either, because he needs it to feel like an artist: A hopeless situation. He tells anecdotes from the classical music business, makes daring excursions into music history, goes from the ridiculous to the sublime and back again. Yet his question of fate remains unanswered: what if, for once, he were to give free rein to his passion and finally attract the attention of his secretly adored singer Sarah? When she is there, he plays especially beautifully - as far as that is possible on his instrument - but she doesn't notice. Tonight at the concert, he wants to change his life and shout "Sarah" spectacularly. But one emotion is seemingly more powerful than anything else - the love-hate relationship with his instrument, the double bass, whose merciless presence is the tragicomedy of his life.
Experience the abysses and shallows of an artist's soul in Patrick Süskind's virtuoso masterpiece!