In January 2027, Philip Glass turns ninety, a milestone being celebrated worldwide with concerts, operas, and festivals. Together with Club Guy & Roni and the North Netherlands Orchestra, the Dutch Touring Opera presents Waiting for the Barbarians, a theatrical explosion in which singers, dancers, and a gigantic orchestra perform Glass’s late masterpiece.

The opera is based on the Nobel Prize-winning novel by J.M. Coetzee and is set in an unnamed border region of an empire obsessed with an external threat: the so-called barbarians. At its center is a magistrate who is initially loyal to the system but begins to have doubts when confronted with violence and propaganda. Waiting for the Barbarians is about ‘us’ and ‘them’, about fear of ‘the other’, abuse of power, disinformation, and the question of how individuals hold their own within a repressive system. With a top international cast and the young guns of Club Guy & Roni’s Poetic Disasters Club, all the ingredients are present for an overwhelming theatrical experience. Sung in English, with Dutch and English surtitles.