Sensational find on the Lower Rhine! A team of archaeological experts has recovered a 19th-century car containing numerous living people. According to their accounts, they were on on their way to Reims, where they wanted to take part in the coronation celebrations of King Charles X. With the help of a time machine, the people stranded in the present must be transported back to their time, but some of them seem to like it better in the modern world...

Gioachino Rossini, the master of opera buffa, composed The Journey to Reims actually as an opera in tribute to Charles X, who was crowned king of France in Reims cathedral in 1825. This is not so much a narrative opera as a cantata in which he composed highly virtuosic arias and ensembles for the best singers of his time. After only a few performances, Rossini withdrew the work. It was not until 1984 that Il viaggio a Reims performed for the first time at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro.

The cast includes no fewer than 20 solo roles, which will offer true bel canto fireworks. Director Jan Eßinger and set designer Benita Roth invite the audience to an amusing journey through time, set on the Lower Rhine.