The St. Margarethen quarry, with its harsh gorges and gentle hills, provides the ideal backdrop for a suspenseful evening of opera featuring Giuseppe Verdi's first major success, "Nabucco". Oppression and freedom, arrogance and faith, trench-crossing love, hatred, hope and despair - strong, always topical emotions, with a biblical background. The dramatic story from the Old Testament tells of the struggle between the megalomaniac Babylonian king, Nabucco, and the oppressed people of the Israelites in ancient Babylon. The lament chorus of the Jewish prisoners, "Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate" (Fly, thought, on golden wings), is still world-famous today and became Italy's secret national anthem even in Verdi's day.