Nils Karlsson Däumling

Musical theater for children by Thierry Tidrow based on the story by Astrid Lindgren | Ages 4 and up

Advance ticket sales start: June 09, 2026

Libretto by Manfred Weiß

Because Mom and Dad are always working, Bertil is often home alone. It’s terribly boring and hard to bear – until one day, Bertil hears an unusual knocking. Is it haunting, Bertil wonders. Or are those raindrops? But then he hears a voice and immediately makes the acquaintance of Nils Karlsson Däumling, known as Nisse. Nisse is, in fact, just as big as a thumb. He only moved in a few days ago – into Bertil's basement, more precisely: into the apartment of a mouse family currently on vacation.

Nisse invites Bertil to visit him in the mouse apartment. And so a wonderful friendship begins, even if the two have a problem to solve first: their difference in size!
But fortunately, Nisse knows what to do, and soon the two are inseparable...

Manfred Weiß and Thierry Tidrow originally retold Astrid Lindgren's fairytale story of the unlikely friends Bertil and Nisse for the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in their children's opera. Following performances in Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, and at the Semperoper Dresden, we are bringing this piece about the wonderful power of childhood imagination to our stages – and, if you like, to kindergartens and primary schools in Upper Lusatia and Lower Silesia.