Herbstgold 2022 gets under way with an “operetta” full of burning passions, even if these passions are musically ignited by a twelve year old composer: “operetta”, i.e. “little opera”, is what Leopold Mozart called the Singspiel “Bastien and Bastienne” written by his son Wolfgang Amadé Mozart. Legend has it that the work was premiered in the sphere of the mysterious Viennese doctor and faith healer Franz Anton Mesmer, but its origins go back further to a French predecessor: In “Le devin du village”, with text and music by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the quarrelling shepherd couple Colette and Colin are reunited with the help of the village soothsayer; a popular parody of the play even has the characters speak in dialect. Such realism does not enter the picture in the German version used by Mozart, and in the hocus-pocus gibberish of Colas's “would-be sorcerer” more than a hint of Mesmer's own attributes can be detected. But the result is the same: the idyllic shepherd's life is celebrated, the city and its inhabitants are shrugged off as artificial - and the lovers Bastien and Bastienne are reunited beyond all jealousy. Such themes are precisely what delighted both the court and the bourgeoisie of the age and, indeed, still delight us today - the more so with such a passionate young ensemble as here, led from the podium by Heinz Ferlesch and directed by the duo Carolin Pienkos and Cornelius Obonya.