Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Ingo Metzmacher, Sofia Jernberg, Klangforum Wien
At the invitation of the Wiener Festwochen 2021, Marlene Monteiro Freitas, a choreographer of overwhelming images and fascinating details, is staging for the first time a work from the standard musical repertoire. A ‘melodrama’ is how Arnold Schönberg referred to the 21 poems from Albert Giraud’s cycle Pierrot lunaire that he set to music in 1912. A commedia dell’arte figure – naive, curious, eccentric, lonely – staggers about a kaleidoscopic soundscape between speech and song, intimacy and expressivity, comedy and tragedy. Together with conductor and Schönberg expert Ingo Metzmacher and experimental vocalist Sofia Jernberg, Freitas appropriates the iconic work of musical modernism for her unique visual adventures. All lust, all fever, always vital and always morbid – as it engages with Pierrot lunaire, Freitas’s choreographic idiom is a match made in heaven!
Concept, Direction: Marlene Monteiro Freitas
Conductor: Ingo Metzmacher
Pierrot Lunaire: Sofia Jernberg
Ensemble: Klangforum Wien / Vera Fischer (flute, piccolo), Bernhard Zachhuber (clarinet, bass clarinet), Gunde Jäch-Micko (violin, viola), Andreas Lindenbaum (violoncello), Florian Müller (piano)
Musical Assistance: Michael Zlabinger
Artistic Assistance: Claúdio da Silva
Space, Light: Yannick Fouassier
Dramaturgy: Martin Valdés-Stauber
Production management: Sandra Azevedo, Soraia Gonçalves
Costume production: Marisa Ribeiro
Props: Marlene Monteiro Freitas, Cláudio da Silva
A commission and a production by Wiener Festwochen
Coproduction: Holland Festival (Amsterdam)
In collaboration with P.OR.K (Lisbon)
Distribution: Wiener Festwochen, Key Performance (Stockholm)
Premiere June 2021, Wiener Festwochen
copyright design: José Albergaria