This paper focuses on two outstanding performances staged in the first half of the 2010s; the masterwork of the 20th-century German expressionist composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, The Soldiers, based on the play of the same title by the 18th-century German playwright Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. The significance of the analysis lies in the fact that the compositional technique, which was innovative at the time and philosophically grounded, and the richness of the theatrical tools employed by the composer had a lasting inspirational effect on generations of musicians and theatre-makers at the turn of the millennium and in the two decades that followed. In view of the direct influence of the Sturm und Drang movement (and Lenz within it) and Georg Büchner on 20th-century German Expressionist opera and drama, and the fact that Zimmermann himself was responsible for the transformation of the original drama into a libretto, the paper will examine the dramaturgical construction of the work in close connection with the question of the inseparable dramaturgy of the music.