Meike Rötzer narrates Anna Karenina

The actress Meike Rötzer has been responsible for one of the most exciting start-ups in publishing for three years: the Erzählbuchverlag. World literature for the eardrums is available as an audio download. The great novels and dramas - freely narrated. This is theater for the ears and an enjoyable key, a true Dietrich, to the material of world literature. A message to our cultural memory before writing.

Almost 150 years ago, Lev Tolstoy's world-famous novel Anna Karenina was published, about an extraordinary woman whose life is shattered between her love for officer Vronsky and the constraints of society. The large-scale portrait of the Tsarist state and the family crisis area is still fascinating and moving today.

Anna Karenina visits her brother Stepan, whose affair with the nanny of their five children has just been discovered by his wife Dolly - perhaps Anna can help? While she is able to reconcile the two over time, she herself falls passionately in love with the up-and-coming officer Vronsky, whom she first meets fleetingly at the station and later at the ball. He was supposed to marry Kitty, Stepan's wife's sister. But soon the whole of St. Petersburg society knows about the passionate affair. Not least because of Anna's unwanted pregnancy, which soon leads her son and husband into a destructive maelstrom of social ostracism and isolation. For even if her husband is overwhelmed by the new feeling of being able to forgive, society demands a duel. Or a divorce. When both are denied, Anna sees no other solution than suicide. Wronksi goes to war. But Tolstoy's alter ego, Konstantin Levin, who brought his great love Kitty to the family estate, is also driven by the futility of his life and his thoughts revolve around suicide. However, he finds a faith independent of the church, which makes him independent of everything that can happen to him in life.

Meike Rötzer completed her acting training at the Otto-Falckenberg-Schule in Munich. She made her debut at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe in 1996 and performed at the Städtische Bühnen Kiel from 2000. Further freelance productions followed, including at the Theater Berliner Sophiensaele. She has been recording radio plays and audio books since 2007 and was nominated for the German Audio Book Award for best interpreter in 2023 for her work on Katja Petrowskaja's Vielleicht Esther. She has been discussing nature and animals in the NATURerKUNDEN podcast she has produced since 2021. From 2008 to 2022, she worked as an editor for fiction at the publishing house Matthes & Seitz Berlin. Rötzer founded the Erzählbuchverlag in 2022: dramas and novels from world literature are condensed and told in contemporary language. She performs her narrative solos at the Deutsches Theater Berlin, literature houses and salons, among others, and gives narrative concerts with the Rundfunksymphonieorchester Berlin with conductors such as Oscar Jockel. Since 2023, rbb has been broadcasting the storytelling lounge "Richtig gutes Zeug!", which she co-founded.

Charlotte Balle completed her studies with Prof. Petru Munteanu, Prof. Walter Levin, Prof. Christiane Edinger and Prof. Winfried Rademacher with the soloist exam. She was a member of the first violin section of the Stuttgart State Orchestra, the Hamburg State Opera and the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra. She is the first violinist of the Ladystrings string quartet, which is dedicated to staged concerts. The quartet has regularly toured Germany with musical readings with actors such as Miroslav Nemec and Udo Wachtveitl. Charlotte Balle has performed on stages around the world as a solo partner of Jon Lord (Deep Purple), Silje Nergaard and the Tord Gustavsen Trio as well as with pop music greats (Michael Jackson, Robbie Willimas and others). In addition to her artistic activities, she is also committed to musical and educational work. Many of her students have won prizes at national and international competitions.

A cooperation of Volkstheater Rostock & Literaturhaus Rostock.