Max und Moritz - Wien - 2026/27

Volksoper Wien, Wien

A ballet comedy based on Wilhelm Busch, by Edmund Gleede

“That was the first prank, but the second follows right away…”

Those words from Wilhelm Busch’s *Max and Moritz*, which are so characteristic of the story about the two rascals, have become an integral part of the German language. Who doesn’t know them? Max and Moritz, those two who get up to all sorts of mischief and annoy not only Widow Bolte and Teacher Lämpel, but the entire village, turning it upside down. They embody an archetypal humor that has shaped generations and continues to resonate to this day. With them, Wilhelm Busch created characters who, with an anarchic delight in breaking the rules, challenge the bourgeois order of their environment and reduce it to absurdity.

In this amusing and lively ballet adaptation by Ferenc Barbay and Michael Kropf, set to music by Gioachino Rossini, this unique world is retold through dance. Audiences of all ages—young and old alike—will immerse themselves in the seven famous pranks and experience a ballet comedy that feels like vividly flipping through a dynamic comic book—full of energy, imagination, and tongue-in-cheek humor.

Recommended for ages 6 and up