Every lover is a warrior. With utopian enthusiasm, Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe stages Monteverdi’s Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi.
Meirhaeghe is taking on Claudio Monteverdi. At the end of his life, this king of late Italian Renaissance music published his zesty Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi. Meirhaeghe turns these dazzling vocal works about war and love into a call for freedom, enflamed by fighting spirit and passion. With an eye to the ancient Greeks, he creates a contemporary and uninhibited orgy that blurs the boundaries between the human and the divine.
For Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, theatre is a crossroads in time: a time machine squarely in the middle of the present in which distant pasts and futures, origins and utopias, merge to form a radically new story with a soundscape and cast to match. Moving beyond the distinctions between insider and outsider, MADRIGALS presents a society full of uniqueness and talent where conservative dogma and stigmas make way for sexuality, abandonment and release.
Artist and composer Jesse Kanda (who as a musician goes by the name of ‘Doon Kanda’ and is known to the general public for his collaborations with Björk and others), will rewrite Monteverdi's music to a large extent.
A good example of how music, theatrical images, humour and emotion go together is when, on the empty silver stage, a fire suddenly ignites - ignite the spark! - and the performers form a circle around it.
"They become one body. The beats alternating with the classical performance of Monteverdi work wonderfully here."
"In Madrigals , Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe sets to work with Claudio Monteverdi's eighth book of madrigals. But since the emotions of love and struggle belong to us all, the same applies to the performance of canti guerrieri and amorosi. Privileges and dogmas do not exist in BAM's artistic universe, so the dancers sing and the singers dance. Monteverdi survives all that. More than that, his music is the perfect soundtrack for an hour-and-a-half-long ritual where our humanity itself is addressed and celebrated."
"Not a real choreography but, rather a performance. (...) Here the body, the voice, the singing, the action, the scenography and all the other elements summoned on stage suggest a very sophisticated series of intuitions. The ensemble is a madrigal in name and in fact, which establishes a totally carnal relationship with Monteverdi's music. In this show, the archive is present according to a dimension that we would define "from Wunderkammer". On stage, from Monteverdi to performance art, a thread is stretched which, when looked closely, is a real game of mirrors. a still and always current dimension of the discourse on the performing arts. Creative processes feed on ever new and different relationships with the past and with the past of the arts themselves. "
Credits
concept, direction
- Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe
music
- Claudio Monteverdi
- Doon Kanda (aka Jesse Kanda)
with
- Hanako Hayakawa
- Alice Giuliani
- Antonio Fajardo
- Els Mondelaers
- Khaled Barghouthi
- Lucie Plasschaert
- Clément Corrillon
- Victor Dumont
musicians
- Madoka Nakamaru
- Pieter Theuns
- Rebecca Huber
- Wouter Deltour
choreography
- Sophia Rodriguez
text, dramaturgy
- Louise van den Eede
research
- Louise van den Eede
lighting and set design
- Zaza Dupont
- Bart van Merode
co-curator visuals
- Koi Persyn
Muzikale leiding & co-composer
- Wouter Deltour
Voice therapy
- Rosanne Groenendijk
Voice coaching
- Els Mondelaers
musical coaching
- Pieter Theuns
body coaching
- Sophia Rodriguez
Visual artists
- Sanam Khatibi
- Justin Fitzpatrick
- Thomas Renwart
- Anthony Ngoya
- Gilles Dusong
- Christiane Blattmann
- Filip Anthonissen
- Daan Couzijn
- Che Go Eun
- Tom Hallet
- Nokukhanya Langa
- Tristan Bründler
Shibari coaching
- Marc Beshibari
video
- Filip Anthonissen
Fotografie grot
- Thibaut Lampe
dresser
- Kasia Mielczarek
light
- Danielle van Riel
sound
- Karel Marynissen
technician
- Kevin Deckers
trainee assistant to the director
- Ika Schwanders
Teaser & making off
- Charles Dhondt
videotechniek
- Bert Demeulenaere
production management
- Eglantine Möller
technical production management
- Anne Van Es
production
- Muziektheater Transparant
- d e t h e a t e r m a k e r
coproduction
- DE SINGEL
- Concertgebouw Brugge
- Theater Rotterdam / Productiehuis Rotterdam
- B'Rock Orchestra
- Perpodium
- C-TAKT
dispersion
- ART HAPPENS
with the support of
- Inspiratum
- tax-shelter van de Belgische Overheid
- de Vlaamse Overheid
in collaboration with
- O. Festival for Opera. Music. Theatre
- Opera Ballet Vlaanderen
- Troubleyn / Laboratorium
- Matterhorn VZW
thanks to
- ShowTex
- Kopspel
- Divi-divi
- de grotten van Dinant
