Organization

Admin

Festival d'Aix en Provence

Stage director

Stage director (+8)

Barrie Kosky

Lighting designer

Lighting designer (+2)

Urs Schönebaum

Conductor

Conductor (+1)

Pierre Bleuse

Baritone (+8)

Johannes Martin Kränzle

King George

Soprano (+5)

Anna Prohaska

Soprano

Violinist (+7)

Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Violin

Assistant Stage Director

Stage director (+1)

Dagmar Pischel

Assistant Conductor

Pianist (+2)

Levi Hammer

Théâtre du Jeu de Paume

Orchestra

Ensemble intercontemporain

The very essence of performance in a pair of major works of contemporary music theatre. A man, a woman: the complete possible gamut of vocal expression, an infinite collection of emotional states, changing all the time. Around them, a small ensemble forced to its expressive limits as it rushes in a flash through the history of music; a violin driven to the utmost excess, out of tune or broken. Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969) deals with the insanity of King George III of England, who wanted to learn to sing to his birds, and evokes a powerful empathy with the ‘mad’ – those ventriloquists of shared traumas. The Kafka-Fragments (1987) are a succession of forty miniatures, being as many physical and metaphysical variations on walking – determined, wayward or constrained – expressing Kafka’s existential anxiety in an instant and with exquisite nuance. Barrie Kosky’s approach is intense and pared-down, entirely at the service of first-class interpreters and an unsparing reading of these extreme works.

EIGHT SONGS FOR A MAD KING
BY PETER MAXWELL DAVIES
MUSIC THEATRE FOR MALE VOICE AND ENSEMBLE
LIBRETTO BY RANDOLPH STOW BASED ON REMARKS BY KING GEORGE III
FIRST PERFORMED ON 22 APRIL 1969 AT QUEEN ELIZABETH HALL, LONDON

KAFKA-FRAGMENTE
BY GYÖRGY KURTÁG
FOR SOPRANO AND VIOLIN, TO TEXTS BY FRANZ KAFKA, OPUS 24
FIRST PERFORMED ON 25 APRIL 1987 AT THE WITTENER TAGE FÜR NEUE KAMMERMUSIK, WITTEN (GERMANY)

Stage director
Barrie Kosky
Lighting design and semistaging
Urs Schönebaum
Staging assistant
Dagmar Pischel
EIGHT SONGS FOR A MAD KING
Conductor
Pierre Bleuse
Conductor's assistant
Levi Hammer
Un homme
Johannes Martin Kränzle
Orchestra
Ensemble Intercontemporain
KAFKA-FRAGMENTE
Une femme
Anna Prohaska*
Une violoniste
Patricia Kopatchinskaja
*Former artist of the Académie

Grianghraif