Jonathan Littell’s novel ‘Les Bienveillantes’ (2006) was hugely successful and quickly became an international bestseller, chiefly because of the unique point of view from which the story was told: the SS officer Maximilian Aue is both a witness to and a perpetrator of Nazi war atrocities. Opera Vlaanderen has now commissioned librettist Händl Klaus and the young Catalan composer Hèctor Parra to create a new opera about it. Klaus translated the story into a poetic, gruesome fever dream in which we are carried along by Aue. ‘Les Bienveillantes/Die Wohlgesinnten’ is Hèctor Parra’s sixth larger-scale work for musical theatre. The director and spiritus rector is Calixto Bieito, who following his early years as the enfant terrible of the opera scene, has become one of the most requested names in the opera world.