Gotha (dpa/th) - After a two-year break due to the pandemic, the Ekhof Festival will take place again this year in Gotha. From July 1 to August 28, 2022, the festival will take you to Florence, the location of the play, on its historic stage with Machiavelli's comedy "Mandragola". In addition to a dozen performances of the comedy from 1518 staged by Compagnie en Route as a play with musical accompaniment, concerts are also on the program over the next two months. The festival comes to an end on August 28, followed by fireworks for the big baroque festival. On the last weekend in August, Schloss Friedenstein goes on a journey through time with craftsmen and traders in robes, a historic carousel and more, and commemorates the reign (1732-1772) of Duke Friedrich III. from Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg.
The Ekhof Theater at Friedenstein Castle is considered a unique stage: It is the oldest surviving baroque theater with still functioning mechanical stage technology. Duke Friedrich I of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg had the theater built at the end of the 17th century. The theater experienced its artistic heyday in the second half of the 18th century, when the Seylersche Schauspiel-Gesellschaft around Conrad Ekhof (1720-1778) came to Gotha in 1774. Today the Ekhof Theater is part of the European Route of Historical Theaters.
