The Wedding

"The language of the people in this play expresses confusion of every kind, so that one person does not really understand what another one means, everyone just talks for themselves. It is as if they were talking to each other in foreign languages – without knowing them; they only think that they know the language, which leads to yet another level of misunderstanding." (Elias Canetti about his play Hochzeit)

While the wife of the caretaker lies on her deathbed in the basement flat of an apartment building, the ageing owner of the building, who lives higher up, is under intense pressure: the wishes and desires of countless relatives and speculators are focused on her property. Meanwhile, on the first floor of the building, the wedding of the Segensreichs is taking place. Soon, human urges triumph over social conventions, and not even the bride and groom can escape the sexual advances of family members and guests. Egotism, greed and claims of ownership rattle the bourgeois foundations. In the end, the whole building collapses in an earthquake.

In his debut play from 1932, Elias Canetti described the approaching downfall of a society – in an absurd, comic, depressing, brutally honest panopticon.

The Jewish author, who was born in Bulgaria and later lived in Manchester, Frankfurt, Vienna and Zurich, emigrated from Vienna via Paris to London in 1938. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Canetti’s best-known works include his philosophical masterpiece Crowds and Power.