Ten Words to Live By

Dream Theater The Long Island-based quintet Dream Theater are, in the 21st century, the standard bearers of progressive metal. While the subgenre's origins can be traced to Rush's song "Bastille Day" in 1975, and Queensrÿche's 1988 concept offering Operation: Mindcrime was its first full-length album, Dream Theater have largely defined and expanded the music's horizons since 1986. The band's ability to deliver tight, melodic, musically sophisticated songs and thematic concept recordings that encompass elements of hook-based hard rock, riff-fueled metal, syncopated prog, and sophisticated lyrics have made them the act that subsequent genre bands aspire to and are measured by. While five of their albums have charted inside the Top 20 of the Top 200, ten have placed inside the top half of the chart; they have sold more than 12 million records globally.

There are few Biblical characters more sharply drawn than Saul, the unsuspecting first king of the united monarchy of Israel and Judah, a loving pater familias at times and a fratricidal maniac at others. The Book of First Samuel becomes a page-turner from the moment Saul is introduced as “the handsomest man in Israel, standing head and shoulders above the rest” to his ignominious death in battle, a failed suicide finished off by an enemy solder.

Markus Brück (Saul), Benjamin Hulett (Jonathan), Eric Jurenas (David), Mary Bevan (Michal), Sophie Bevan (Merab), Raphael Höhn (High Priest/Witch), NDR Chor, FestspielOrchester Göttingen, Laurence Cummings