“Falco” and “Freddie Mercury” appear in Steyr

If you swapped your e-guitar for a harp high above the clouds and grabbed grand pianos, that also has its advantages. You can fly anywhere. Axel Herrig and Sascha Lien settle on the stage of the Schlossgraben at the music festival with their concert show “Falco meets Queen” for the premiere on July 20th. Director Karl-Michael Ebner emphasizes that the production flown to him is not an artistic emergency landing of the festival. Although there are only four days of rehearsals and resident director Susanne Sommer is on a break this year, together with Lien and Herrig, who are once more performing the rock stars “Falco” and “Freddie Mercury”, he has performed from the classics “Rock Me Amadeus” to “We Are the Champions ” wrote a completely new piece for Steyr. “That’s how it was on the Peter Alexander show,” he says, “Peter Alexander is on stage as usual, but episode twelve is completely different from episode eleven.”

In any case, Herrig, a colleague of Ebner’s at the Volksoper, and Lien can draw on a wealth of experience as the characters of the super-cool Viennese and lascivious London rock idols. The motive that two musical geniuses who had never met in earthly life then make heavenly music together is not new. Johann Hölzel already played one of the two leading roles in the musical “Falco meets Amadeus” at the beginning of the millennium in the Deutsches Theater in Munich and in the Theater des Westens in Berlin. Together with Sascha Lien, who was personally selected by Queen guitarist Brian May for the leading role in the internationally acclaimed hit musical “We Will Rock You” in 2007, he then performed the revue “Falco meets Queen ” Premiere.

The Steyr Music Festival also used the poster motifs from back then with their shimmer and glitter for the summer production. Ebner knows that choosing the program this year is a particular challenge. The homage to the music of Falco and Freddie Mercury is a plowed field. Last October, Herrig and Lien made guest appearances with an orchestral version of “Falco meets Mercury” at a concert show organized by the Lions Club at the Melodium in Peuerbach. In Steyr, the music of the two rock giants is to be re-merged. “It will be a whole new piece,” promises Ebner.