Jürgen Flimm, acclaimed stage director and former intendant of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, brings an intensely personal project to the Pierre Boulez Saal.

“When the horrors of the First World War came to an end and the noise of battle faded 100 years ago, officer cadet Karl Varges, aged 18, was dead. He had marched off into those battles not long before – at first, as if he were going on a vacation camp, on a cheerful journey. But in the moving letters he wrote home, that picture increasingly turned into a horrible nightmare. My grandfather, the historian Prof. Willi Varges, collected my uncle Karl’s letters. I would like to read excerpts from them for you.”   — Jürgen Flimm