Festspielhaus Baden-Baden

When does the modern age actually begin? The usual answer is "around 1900," but for cultural history, the era of constant questioning already begins with Romanticism. Specifically, with Beethoven and Rossini, the most famous composers of their time, who were each driven in their own way. We are presenting Rossini's fairy tale La Cenerentola (Cinderella) – a signature role, by the way, of the great Pauline Viardot, a resident of Baden-Baden. Beethoven's Seventh Symphony and Rossini's operas brought the mechanical frenzy into music around the time when the term "railway" was first mentioned. Shortly afterward, the work of J. S. Bach was rediscovered, an occasion to pause and savor the event – and to found many middle-class choirs. What would German democracy be without its choirs and associations, those social training grounds of self-determination?