Paradise Lost

John Milton was an English revolutionary and poet. He was therefore predestined to cast the prehistory of rebellion in a literary form. His legendary verse epic "Paradise Lost" (1667) tells of the fall of the archangel Lucifer, his campaign of revenge and the loss of paradise. Lucifer was the first to rebel against the divine order and was cast into hell along with his hosts. In return, he convinced Eve to eat an apple from the tree of knowledge. Milton succeeds in narrating mythical elementary processes as comprehensible actions. And here the blind poet achieves something unheard of: the devil, in his futile rebellion against God's rule, appears as the hero of the epic, as a symbol of man's emancipation from the pre-formed order. Full of creative defiance, he sets about reshaping hell through his own efforts. The myth of the fall from hell has become a pop-cultural foil for books and films from LORD OF THE RINGS to STAR WARS, particularly in the English-speaking world. The musical theater group Kommando Himmelfahrt transforms Milton's eloquent epic into a musical-satanic late-night show about revolution, lust and loss. In a mixture of rock concert, sermon and performance, four actresses and a band tell of the effort and beauty of human self-empowerment.