Robert Wilson said, when preparing to stage Helmut Lachenmann’s deeply intricate and sensually vibrant opera Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern, that he could not imagine staging it in a typical opera house. He could not have found a better hall than the Jahrhunderthalle in Bochum, a medium-sized town about an hour north-east of Düsseldorf and one of the host cities of this year’s Ruhrtriennale.
