A television film based on two short modern operas: Weisse Rose by Udo Zimmerman and Litany of our Time by Ton de Leeuw.
Weisse Rose is about the execution in 1943 of two students Hans and Sophie Scholl, who were arrested after printing and distributing leaflets calling for opposition to the Nazi regime. The opera takes place on the eye of their execution, when they are spending their last night together in a cell.
Litany of Our Time is set at an airport, where a man is waiting for his flight. In these impersonal and mechanical surroundings, where everyone is going their own way, he is bombarded with world news from a newspaper. News about wars, famine, natural disasters and violence scream at him from the pages, but they hardly affect him; they are sounds from a totally different world than the smooth, streamlined world in which he finds himself at that moment. He is seized with a tremendous feeling of unreality.
