Who can be trusted when the coach turns off into the dark forest, when tenor and bass take up arms, when the animals of the forest communicate with mysterious sounds, when the trees exchange radio signals? Do not trust the bus driver with his faible for wolf gorge remixes. Who is a chorus singer, who is a soloist? What is a prop, what is a firearm? The only certainty is that "Der Freischütz" would not pass the Bechdel test. And at midnight, the gates of hell open!
"Schöner grüner Jungfernkranz" and "Joho-trallala": Der Freischütz is an opera of evegreens of choral music. Almost every single tune became a piece of folk music soon after the operas premiere. But behind the idyllic facade of a community singing together, horror lurks: Peer pressure, envy and superstition, terrible events in a past long gone still haunting the living, fear of failure and bullying. Perhaps it was the secret of Carl Maria von Weber's success that he found the musical means of expression for the fears of a community.
The performance group Showcase Beat Le Mot is directing an opera for the first time, Der Freischütz. They are particularly interested in the opera chorus as the embodiment of a sprawling musical machine, but also as a setting for social processes in which the opera plot is duplicated in a variety of ways.

Musical director: Ektoras Tartanis / Directors: Showcase Beat Le Mot / Set design: Antonia Kamp, René Fußhöller / Costume design: Clemens Leander / Video, lighting design: Joscha Eckert / Head of lighting: Michael Philipp / Sound: Kai Littkopf / Dramaturgy: Tatjana Beyer, Annika Hertwig, Ann Christine Mecke / Production management Showcase Beat Le Mot: Olaf Nachtwey / Choir director: Norbert Kleinschmidt / Répétiteur and musical assistant: Thomas Schmieger / Répétiteur: Andrea Mele, Hiroki Ojika, Changmin Park, Johannes Knapp / Directing assistant and evening direction: Sebastian Krauß / Directing assistant 2020: Kristýna Kraus / Stage manager: Cornelia Dettmers / Set design assistant:  Samuel Herger / Set design assistant 2020: Paula Mierzowsky / Costume design assistant: Milagros Pia del Pilar Salecker / Set design intern: Nora Petzold / Costume design intern: Miriam Ortlieb / Supertitles: Claudia Jentzen (set-up) Norbert Eßer, Carla Brazell, Jörg M. Krause / Technical management: Felix Klemp / Lighting operations management: Michael Philipp / Sound operations management: Kai Littkopf / Video: Daniel Lonzano / Props: Jonas Ladwig

Heads of departments
Director of technical production: Beate Kahnert / Buildteam manager: Alexander Albiker / Assistant director (technical): Anne Kaiser / Head of stage: Stephan Lux
Head of lighting: Dorothee Hoff, Michael Philipp / Props production manager: Eva Haberlandt / Sound, video and broadcast manager: Jonas Gottschall
Wigs and make-up senior manager: Michael Shaw / Head of costume production: Jörg Hauser / Senior scenic construction manager (wood): Wolfgang Dreher
Senior scenic construction manager (metal): Bernd Stöcklin / Senior scenic painters manager: Christoph Bruckert / Decorations manager: Martin Grosser / Model room manager: Dario van de Meulenreek / Armoury manager: Raphael Weber

Der Freichütz is a production by Showcase Beat Le Mot with Theater Freiburg and Konzert Theater Bern. Funded by Doppelpass – Theater Cooperation Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

"Surprise, surprise: Take 1 pc. highly popular yet sort of dated opera, bring in a hip, post-dramatic performance company to take a discursive and new approach to the hunter's opera "Freischütz" - and then they put up a forest so naturalistically that the singers exclaim: "Have we ever had trees like this on stage!" Well, some things do not turn out as planned.
But of course, in the first opera production by Showcase Beat Le Mot, the wood is not a wood, and the  nocturnal forest road projected on the curtain during the overture is in fact a highway to hell.  Key to this version of Weber's highly romantic opera, in which women are handed out like trophies to the best marksmen and where the devil directs the bullets,is anew framing it receives before it begins: The chorus, stranded helplessly in the forest on the way to the premiere in a rickety bus, simply sings the opera itself."
(Badische Zeitung, September, 30th, 2022, René Zipperlen, „In the jungle of partriarchy“ – translation Showcase Beat Le Mot)

".... like a horror movie."
(Badische Zeitung October, 4th, 2022, Alexander Dick, "Wo ist die Wolfsschlucht"– translation Showcase Beat Le Mot)