COSMO is a performance and spoken-word opera set in Munich in the early 1970s. It unfolds in a nightclub in the heart of the city’s old town, a gathering place for young Jewish men and women. Against the backdrop of an unresolved historical crime, the murder of a Jewish club owner, the work traces the textures of everyday life in what was then one of Germany‘s biggest party cities, yet still deeply marked by its Nazi past and the persistence of its afterlives.

Blending dance, sampled and live music, and sung and spoken text, COSMO offers a partial, fleeting glimpse into this moment. It attends in particular to the emergence of a second generation, Jews born after the Shoah, whose presence and practices helped shape Munich’s subcultural formations.