In her whole life to date she has never seen anything so beautiful as the dust that rises from the black boards in the limelight when Thoas says goodbye to Iphigenia and her brother Orestes. Now, Katharina stands in the wings and watches a transformation, watching at the same time how the transformation is made. Members of the audience are in tears, and the stagehands are getting ready for the curtain. The eagle that dives into the Wolf’s Glen has real feathers and weighs eight pounds, but so that its plummet provokes the desired consternation in the audience and not laughter, the dummy is prepared with fishing line and is lowered in slow motion, swinging from side to side. This makes it look heavy and ominous. Truth, says the set designer Klaus, needs to be properly engineered if it is to be effective. For Kleist’s Hermannsschlacht the whole stage is covered with earth, which is no end of help in understanding the play, though of course filthy for the actors, who end up wearing the mud as a kind of second skin. A betrayal looks different under red lighting and blue, and an aria sounds different in a piano rehearsal and with full orchestral accompaniment. An ensemble from Sofia gives a guest performance for three days, Katharina doesn’t speak a word of Bulgarian but is impressed anyway, and after the last performance everyone sits in the canteen drinking and talking and singing together, including Katharina and of course Vadim.