Der magische Goethe

Taking the Zauberlehrling literally is a better idea than it sounds. Patrick Rohbeck does sleight of hand to Goethe's words, close enough that the audience can watch the hands and still not catch them, and Joachim Rosenbrück accompanies on the Thuringian forest zither — the instrument the house says Mephisto used to bewitch Gretchen. The claim on the billing is a symbiosis of magic, poetry and music that has never existed before, which is the sort of thing billing says; what is genuinely unusual is the scale. Big wonders in a small circle, as the house puts it, and a hundred seats is the right size for a trick you are meant to disbelieve at arm's length.