The travelers, traveling people, people without a permanent home - whoever used these terms in former centuries usually meant the Gypsies. History records - as with the Jews - centuries of discrimination, ostracism, persecution, and expulsion. In the mean time we know that being homeless, expelled, ostracized, or having to go into exile does not necessarily only have to do with the term "Gypsy," which has meanwhile become a swearword. 

 

In the present program, songs and literature from the Romantic period with their rather idealized or clichéd images are contrasted with texts by authors of the twentieth century. Almost all of these authors - regardless of their extraction - have something in common: they have themselves experienced what it means to be expelled, to have lost their homes, to have lived in exile. 

 

Franziska Vondru was born in Vienna, where she initially studied music education, with a major in voice, at the College of Music and Representational Arts, receiving a graduation prize for outstanding artistic performance from the Federal Minister for Science and the Arts. Vondru continued her voice studies in Frankfurt/Main. At the University of Koblenz/Landau she earned a diploma in speech training. She had engagements at the Frankfurt theater, at the German Opera Berlin, and various guest appearances in Europe, was additionally active on radio and television, and performed in the areas of art song and oratorio. From 1991 to 1998 she was voice teacher at the Institute for Music Pedagogy of Goethe University Frankfurt. Since 1998 she has taught at the Frankfurt College of Music. A particular emphasis of her concert activities are thematic recitals with art song and dramatic art, which are partially documented by CD recordings, for example Heart, die, or sing" (Musicaphon M 56844)