The pasta baker cracks a few eggs and reaches for the stirring stick, a little later the cobblers start work, next come the plasterers and blacksmiths. Thus a small Italian town with its traditional crafts gradually comes to life - when Giorgio Battistelli, as conductor, gives the cues for his music theatre work EXPERIMENTUM MUNDI. In it, sixteen artisans are on stage, all from Albano Laziale, a small town south of Rome, above Lake Albano, where the composer was also born in 1953.

In 1981, as a young composer, he created a monument to his hometown with EXPERIMENTUM MUNDI and at the same time a piece that has long since become a classic of contemporary music with more than 400 performances worldwide - and in which the craftsmen actually "only" go about their daily work. This work, however, with the resulting noises, the rhythms and specific sounds, is artfully processed into a music theatre that is about creating a world through the artistry of craftsmanship. The sixteen artisans are assisted by a percussionist, four singers, and an actor. The latter recites texts from the 18th century with excerpts from the "Encyclopédie" by Diderot and d'Alembert, in which the individual trades are described as they are still practised today - and as they can be experienced on stage in the almost one-hour composition.

EXPERIMENTUM MUNDI also offers an introduction to the work of Giorgio Battistelli, whose opera of the same name, based on Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Teorema", will have its world premiere on the main stage of the Deutsche Oper Berlin in June 2023.