Oper Köln | Offenbachplatz

This guide to Oper Köln follows the night of January 24, 1975, when pianist Keith Jarrett sat in a car outside the stage door ready to cancel his concert because the piano waiting inside was not the nine-foot Bösendorfer he'd requested, but a battered, thin-toned rehearsal instrument. It traces how eighteen-year-old promoter Vera Brandes talked him back inside, and how Wilhelm Riphahn's 1957 opera house had already hosted Maria Callas the year it opened. The guide follows what Jarrett decided to do once he sat back down at that broken piano, building a set around its flaws rather than fighting them.