Musical reading with Susanne Franz and Hartmut Saam

At the end of the exhibition "In Goethe's Footsteps through Italy", the Goethe-Institut Freiburg and the Italian Consulate invite you to an atmospheric evening full of language, sound and Mediterranean impressions.

At the center is the musical reading "ÙPUPA - Pictures from a Cork Oak Forest", a literary-musical experience in two languages: Freiburg author Susanne Franz takes the audience into the mysterious world of a southern Italian cork oak forest - poetic, sensual and thought-provoking. She is accompanied by Hartmut Saam on the accordion, whose music sometimes delicately plays around the text, sometimes opens up its own sound spaces.

The story - performed bilingually in German and Italian - tells of a natural phenomenon: the careful harvesting of cork bark. But in the midst of this seemingly silent scene, something begins to speak - a bird, the hoopoe (Italian: Ùpupa), which not only gives the story its name, but also becomes the secret narrator through words and music.

Susanne Franz lived in Freiburg until the end of 2024 and now lives in Campania, southern Italy - where this impressive debut work was written:
"ÙPUPA. Pictures from a cork oak forest / Immagini da un bosco di querce da sughero".

After the reading, we cordially invite you to enjoy a glass of wine and a personal conversation with the artists.