With “Junge Opern Rhein-Ruhr”, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein and its two cooperation partners - Theater Dortmund and Theater Bonn - are pursuing the goal of awarding joint composition commissions for children's operas on the big stage. After the successful start with Marius Felix Lange's “Vom Mädchen Who Didn't Want to Sleep” in the 2013/14 season, the second commissioned opera has now succeeded in gaining the coveted rights to set Astrid Lindgren's “Ronja the robber's daughter” to music for the first time. “The night Ronja was born, thunder rolled over the mountains. Yes, it was a thunderstorm night that even all the fiends who lived in the Mattis Forest crawled away in fright ... ”- Ronja, daughter of the robber chief Mattis, grows up in the middle of the forest. One day she meets Birk on her forays the robber's son from the warring clan of Borka. When their parents forbid them to be friends, Ronja and Birk flee into the woods ... Editing Astrid Lindgren's book for the opera, which is still popular with young and old, requires an experienced and committed team. The libretto was written by Holger Potocki, who has already written numerous texts for contemporary children's operas. He partially changed the chronology of the book and interwoven various scenes into one, thereby creating the atmospheric and dramatic compression that is so important for music theater. As the composer of the family opera, Jörn Arnecke, one of the most important composers of his generation, was won over with “Unter Eis” based on a text by Falk Richter at the RuhrTriennale 2007 and has held a professorship at the Weimar University of Music Franz Liszt since 2009. "Ronja the robber's daughter" will be staged by Johannes Schmid, who already directed "Vom Mädchen Who Didn't Want to Sleep" and whose film "Winter Daughter" was nominated for the Grimme Prize in 2014 after winning the Golden Lola in 2012 at the German Film Prize was awarded for the best children's film.,
