Lächelnd durch den
Ernst der Zeit
('Smiling through the
earnestness of the times')
An entertaining homage
to Heinz Erhardt
The great comedian and poet Heinz Erhardt shaped many people's attitude to life. With their inimitable mix of melancholy and joie de vivre, his gentle, naive compositions and lyrics exerted an irresistible pull. They were not only profoundly amusing, but also always mirrored the sensitive psyche of the characters featured. Erhardt struck a chord with an audience that wanted to leave the dark times of the war and disaster behind them in the years of the Federal Republic's 'economic miracle'. His jokes and songs were and still are public property.
With the help of the band, Max Hopp brings Erhardt's funny, nonsensical and at the same time profound puns and a selection of songs, poems and touching stories to the stage. Max Knoth's arrangements approach Heinz Erhardt's musical sense with delicacy and cleverness.
Max Hopp has performed at the Theater Bremen, at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg and the Schauspielhaus Zurich, at the Münchner Kammerspiele and at the Berliner Volksbühne, and has also appeared at the Salzburg Festival, for example. He performed at the Komische Oper Berlin for the first time in 2010. Since then, he has considered this to be his artistic home, and most recently also staged his The Bandits there. Max Hopp also plays roles in films and on television. He is a co-founder of the nootheater in Berlin, and artists' collective that not only stages plays and audio dramas, but has also already produced and released two films.
Max Knoth works as a composer, arranger and orchestrator. He composes music for films, concerts, plays and recording sessions, and has collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto, Lou Reed, Danny Elfman, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Nils Frahm, Rachel Portman, Alan Silvestri, David Newman, Tom Tykwer, Christoph Schlingensief, Irmin Schmidt (CAN) and Carsten Nicolai | Alva Noto. He has also been a lecturer at the Hessen Film and Media Academy Darmstadt and the BIMM Music Institute for many years.
