Misha Aster, author of the highly acclaimed and filmed book The Reich’s Orchestra, tells the story of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden from the last days of the Kaiser’s Empire to the Fall of the Berlin Wall, painting a dramatic picture of music caught in the wake of political upheaval through Germany’s turbulent 20th century.

Situated in the heart of the German capital, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden was backdrop to countless defining events in modern history, including the Armistice of 1918, Kristallnacht, the Berlin Airlift, and the 1989 Monday demonstrations that ended the Cold War, as well as providing a stage for artistic and political personalities from Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan, Bertold Brecht, Wolfgang Wagner, Dimitri Shostakovich, and Daniel Barenboim, to Wilhelm II, Paul von Hindenburg, Adolf Hitler, Walter Ulbricht, Erich Honecker, and Richard von Weizsäcker.