In furious frenzy, the overture leads us into the cheerful festive mood of a Bohemian village. Only Marie does not want to join the exuberant mood, because just today her parents want to marry her to Wenzel, the son of the wealthy landowner Mícha. Wenzel is cranky, and besides, Marie loves Hans, about whom no one really knows where he comes from. Since Wenzel has never seen Marie before, it is easy for her to scare him in front of his future bride. The matchmaker Kecal, for his part, is able to buy the bride from Hans for 300 guilders on the condition that only "the son of Mícha" may marry Marie. Marie feels betrayed and sees her dream of love destroyed, until it turns out that Hans is Mícha's son from his first marriage, who was thought to have disappeared. And what about Wenzel? He is persuaded by the beautiful Esmeralda to join a traveling circus as a dancing bear, which finally enables him to free himself from his strong-willed mother. With "The Bartered Bride" Adriana Altaras presents herself for the first time as a director at the Graz Opera. Adriana Altaras is a director, author and actress at the same time: since the nineties she has been staging plays and musical theater in the German-speaking world, writing books (such as the novel "Titos Brille", which was made into a film in 2014) and is also nationally known on television. The film "The Microscope" was honored with the German Film Award.