Kings Cross Theatre, Sydney
June 20, 2018

The power of music is at the heart of Justin Fleming’s intellectually probing, frequently thrilling new play Dresden. Moving back and forth across a century, Fleming explores Richard Wagner’s music drama Rienzi, and the impact that it had on a young Adolf Hitler, who became consumed by it.

Yalin Ozucelik as Adolf Hitler in Dresden. Photograph © Clare Hawley

The play opens with an elderly Wagner (Jeremy Waters) dictating his memoirs to his wife Cosima (Renee Lim). Looking back on his struggle as a young man to get Rienzi staged, we watch him beg the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer (Thomas Campbell) to examine the score in a vibrantly funny scene.

Thanks to Meyerbeer’s lobbying, the opera premiered in Dresden in 1842 and became Wagner’s first big success. It told the story of a 14th-century Italian leader who whipped up the crowds to restore Rome to its former glory, crushing the power of the nobles. But eventually the populace became disenchanted and turned on him, burning Rienzi and a few of his loyal supporters to death when they sheltered in the Capitol.

Seventy years after its premiere, the 17-year old Adolf Hitler...