Songs and Fragments - Aix-en-Provence Festival (2024) - Songs and Fragments - Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (2024)

Description

New production.

"Pure performance, in a diptych of major pieces of contemporary musical theater. A man, a woman: the entire spectrum of possible vocal expression, an infinite range of emotional states changing at every moment. Around them, a small ensemble pushed to its final expressive limits traversing the history of music in a flash; a violin bent to all excesses, out of tune or broken live. Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969) evokes the dementia of King George III of England, who wanted to teach his birds to sing, and awakened a powerful empathy for the "crazy" - these ventriloquists of collective traumas. The Kafka-Fragmente (1987) chain together forty miniatures like so many physical and metaphysical variations around the walk – obstinate, wandering or frozen – expressing in an instant and exquisite nuances Kafka's existential concern. Barrie Kosky's approach is intense and spare, entirely at the service of exceptional performers and a reading these extreme works on the bone."

More information is available on the official website of the festival.