„The fair milleress“ - one could hardly imagine a more misleading title! Indeed the name of Franz Schubert's famous cycle puts a woman center stage that in reality never enters the story as an independent character. It's twenty songs instead present us with the psychogram of a young man that is defeated less by love than he is by himself - for in his character highest sensibility and deepest loneliness fuse into a destructive amalgam. The implied suicide and the path leading towards this catastrophic finale shows the young miller following a male-coded pattern: he declines the possibility of opening up to others and continues to insist on his seclusion, which pushes him further and further into his inner world and away from anything that might still have offered him on off-ramp. In our time we're faced with a seemingly evergrowing ​uproar of toxic masculinity. An array of different groups is determined in it's mission to cement an outdated idea of masculinity as their bulwark against a dreaded loss of priviliges and growing calls for emotional availability - the so-called „Manosphere“, „bro culture“ and misogynie as a broad trend on social media are just a few things that come to mind. If we further make ourselves aware of the fact that suicide - the loneliest of all acts - is still a predominantly male phenomenon the glaring relevance of this story becomes aparent. Our thesis is: men with "herzzuvoll" ("hearttofull") are still an abundant species and it is of the outmost importance for a successfull emancipation that they tell stories about their struggles. Because other than what a lot of superhero stories might suggest such a profound loneliness is not a sign of independence or heroism but rather the result of a banal yet incredibly painful lack of social skills. Maybe Schubert would have been better off deviating from Wilhelm Müller's template and calling his cycle "The lonely Miller"? The original title is also doing the dirty work of casting blame on a young woman that never gets to speak up and defend herself. By putting her front and center the title subtly pre-shapes and guides our assessment of the situation: We're inclined to follow a deep running cultural mechanism - and blame the woman. But wouldn't it be much more appropriate for us to ask: What must have gone wrong in a young man's life that his only friend is an imaginary voice and he seems to have no productive way to deal with his suffering? Our program seeks to highlight the aspect of male loneliness but also present the story in the entirety envisioned by the author Wilhelm Müller. Actually, Schubert discarded a whole number of poems in composing his setting of the story: Firstly an extensive pro- and epilogue, in which the poet (in our case a young woman) directly adresses the audience, framing the plot with humorous remarks. Furthermore the composer cut no less than four poems from the ongoing story - these texts are particularly unknown. We want to interlock both layers of the story - Müller's original concept and Schubert's rendition - and allow our audience to experience them as a multifaceted and sometimes contradictory whole. Since an intensive performance is already demanded by Schubert's music it seemed only fitting to enrich the program even further by not only reinserting the missing poems but also incorporating scenic elements and thus giving a careful update to the old format of Liederabend without deconstructing the genre or breaking it's boundaries. While the young miller's character remains consistent throughout the evening our young actress's role draws in the audience by being fundamentally ambivalent. She operates on a broad spectrum oscillating between humorous commentary and deeply affected testimony. Through her presence on stage she also doubles as a mirror: The audience observes her observing the singer and becomes further entangled in the story through her actions and reactions. Over the course of the evening she finds herself more and more removed from her original, cheerful position and is finally faced with a choice: Should she remain under the spell of the miller's extreme emotions or does she have to protect herself from his radical intensity and run for cover?