After Claudio Monteverdi
Directed by SUSANNE KENNEDY, BIANCA VAN DER SCHOOT, SUZAN BOOGAERDT
SOLISTENENSEMBLE KALEIDOSKOP
Orfeo HUBERT WILD
With SUZAN BOOGAERDT, INDRA CAUWELS, MARIE GROOTHOF, ANNA MARIA STURM, BIANCA VAN DER SCHOOT, FLOOR VAN LEEUWEN
Composition CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI
Musical concept and realization TILMAN KANITZ, MICHAEL RAUTER
Stage design KATRIN BOMBE
Costume design LOTTE GOOS
Lighting design JÜRGEN KOLB
Video RODRIK BIERSTEKER
Concept and electronic sound design OLE BROLIN
Dramaturgy MARIT GRIMSTAD EGGEN, JEROEN VERSTEELE
Orpheus and Eurydice: the first artistic couple, he is the survivor, she is the victim. He transforms pain into art. She is silent and dies. Orpheus journeys into the netherworld down to Eurydice to bring her back to life, his life. Eurydice is stunned. – Up until now it has always been about Orpheus. Nobody had ever seriously asked Eurydice if she actually wanted to go back with him, to him.
“Orfeo” directed by Susanne Kennedy, Suzan Boogaerdt and Bianca van der Schoot will be presented as a series of locations through which the audience walks individually. They are led through a variety of spaces in groups of a maximum of eight people: stations of Orpheus’s descent and his attempt to win his lover back for himself.
Musically this creation is a departure from Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo”. Excerpts of the original score will be played over each other or at tiny periodic intervals. Extant musical material will be reworked and performed by the Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop using collage, looping and sampling techniques.
In this environment members of the audience will become witnesses of Orfeo’s journey through the realm of spirits, of the half-dead. Eurydice will not be played by one but by several actresses. She has no tangible shape, she appears in various different forms. The characters are trapped in a shell, in an artificial, enforced identity with which they can never be comfortable. Their souls are buried deep inside.
A production of Ruhrtriennale – Festival der Künste and Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop.
Co-produced by Berliner Festspiele and Toneelgroep Oostpool.
The production is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation
