The BigBand of the Deutsche Oper Berlin is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a programme dedicated to French jazz. During the German occupation, it stood for freedom and resistance, and in the post-war period it became the soundtrack of existentialism and an expression of the attitude to life of an entire generation: in the nightclubs of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, musicians like Miles Davis and Sidney Bechet met Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Boris Vian. Juliette Gréco was the undisputed muse of the Bohemians – and for many jazz musicians from the USA, Paris became a place of yearning, beyond racial segregation and the McCarthy era. The BigBand of the Deutsche Oper Berlin celebrates the spirit of those years with music by Michel Legrand, Miles Davis, Jacques Brel and Serge Gainsbourg, as well as with texts by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre.