Nibelungen Festival 2025: Beautiful brutality in the open air theater Worms!

Nibelungen Festival 2025: Beautiful brutality in the open air theater Worms!

In the city of Worms, the anticipation is bubbling for a significant cultural event: The festival present a new work called "See from Asche", which celebrates its premiere on July 11, 2025. Director Nico Hofmann is enthusiastic about the topicality of the fabric, in which the renowned playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig also has his fingers in the game. In this piece, he researches the topics related to "Nibelung's fidelity" and the question of human use of death in times of crisis. According to Hofmann, the topic is more explosive than ever and reflects the current social challenges, as the Kleine Zeitung reports.

a festival of the theater

The staged threads draw the talented director Mina Salehpour, who has already worked at the Vienna Burgtheater and similar renowned houses. Salehpour emphasizes the challenges that play in the open air brings and promises a mixture of "beauty and brutality". With the help of sophisticated lighting design, she wants to dramatically shape the transition from the brightness to the dark. Since its foundation in 2002, the festival has developed into a cultural highlight that made wide waves and attracted over 20,000 spectators in the previous year.

costs of the top forces

While preparations for the festival are in full swing in Worms, WDR boss Tom Buhrow ensures excitement in the field of public service media. With an annual salary of 411,000 euros, he is not only the best paid director within the ARD, but also burdens the contributors with a total of almost 750,000 euros annually. This sum includes huge pension provisions and lush additional costs such as a luxurious company car. While Buhrow and his colleagues claim such exorbitant funds, the WDR is fighting with a massive loss of 152 million euros in 2020, despite over 1.1 billion euros in income from radio contributions, as the Ruhrbarone report.