‘Someone must have slandered Josef K, for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.’ This is the famous opening line of Franz Kafka’s novel Der Prozess (The Trial). Gottfried von Einem’s opera of the same name also begins with this mysterious arrest. Josef K. suddenly finds himself in a world he cannot understand, faced with an accusation of which he knows nothing but which seems perfectly clear to everyone else and yet remains inexplicable; with an absurd court case that nevertheless follows strict rules; with an arrest that appears to have no effect on his life yet still leads to his death. Is Josef K. the victim of a conspiracy, or is his belief in a conspiracy the only chance of explaining an incomprehensible world?

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