The “mysterious woman from the sea”, vainly attempting to fit into human society, was a source of inspiration for writers, composers and artists alike throughout the 19th century. Theodor Fontane, too, tried his hand at the subject matter: Oceane von Parceval, a fragment of an unfinished novella, was just one of his attempts to encapsulate in the form of Melusine the sense of menace and fascination felt by a bourgeois, male-dominated society faced with femininity coupled with an archaic, erotically permissive artlessness. With Fontane, Oceane’s inability to sympathise with human destinies serves to amplify her alienness. She is indifferent to death and love alike, and as such her attempt to have a relationship with a young landowner, Martin von Diercksen, is doomed to failure.

One of the most successful opera directors working today returned to the Deutsche Oper Berlin for the premiere of OCEANE in 2019. Canadian Robert Carsen has worked at the world’s major opera houses for the last thirty years. At the Deutsche Oper Berlin he has staged Verdi’s MACBETH, Strauss’s ARIADNE ON NAXOS and most recently Prokofiev’s THE LOVE FOR THREE ORANGES.