Grand Théâtre - Arrière-scène

After Francesco Cavalli and Gian Francesco Busenello
In English and Italian, with French surtitles

Thursday October 16, 2008 at 8 pm
Friday October 17, 2008 at 8 pm
Running time 90 minutes
Adults 20 €, Students 8 €

For more than thirty years, the Wooster Group has consistently challenged audiences and critics alike with their extraordinary performance works, many of which are now recognised as "classics" of the contemporary stage. Their theatre pieces are emblematic of radical staging of both modern and classic texts and an architectonic approach to theatre design. Their latest work La Didone, which brings them to Luxembourg for the first time, is no exception.

EN
The Wooster Group has played a pivotal role in bringing technologically sophisticated and evocative uses of sound, film and video into the realm of contemporary theatre, and in the process has influenced a generation of theatre artists nationally and internationally. The Group's work is unique because it attracts not only the theatre-going community but also artists and enthusiasts of many other cultural disciplines. Their production of Francesco Cavalli's opera La Didone takes up a work from the days when opera was an emerging art form, and sets it down in a new world splintered by video imagery and made brazen by the electric guitar. Stirring another Italian cultural work of art into the mix, the Group brings into collision the ancient shipwreck tale of Aeneas and his Dido with the crashed spaceships of Mario Bava's 1965 Sci-fi B-movie horror film Planet of the Vampires. Identical leather spacesuits, forbidding planetary landscapes and battles with the walking dead meet with the baroque qualities of Cavalli's score.

FR
Ensemble de performeurs, techniciens et artistes new-yorkais, le Wooster Group a joué un rôle essentiel dans l'introduction d'une technologie audio-vidéo, sophistiquée et évocatrice, dans le monde du théâtre contemporain et a été une source d'inspiration pour des générations d'artistes internationaux. Affectionnant tout particulièrement les combinaisons atypiques, le Wooster Groop a pris à bras le corps le projet de l'opéra baroque La Didone (1641) de Cavalli et Busenello pour lui faire aborder les rives du XXIe siècle. L'épopée de Virgile y côtoie ainsi les vaisseaux spatiaux du film culte de Mario Bava, Planet of the Vampires (1965). Mais, loin de s'en tenir là, la compagnie transpose la puissance subtile de la voix et du luth dans notre époque, où les nouveaux médias ont envahi la scène, et recherche l'équilibre entre l'interprétation historique et la musique électronique, le texte dit et chanté, la voix acoustique et amplifiée, le son enregistré et en direct. L'histoire du prince troyen Énée, échoué sur les rives de la Méditerranée, se trouve emportée dans le tourbillon inattendu et surprenant de La Didone du Wooster Group, entre romantisme courtois et science-fiction !

Director Elizabeth LeCompte Musical Director Bruce Odland Set Design Ruud van den Akker Lighting Jennifer Tipton, Gabe Maxson Sound Matt Schloss, Omar Zubair Video Zbigniew Bzymek, Joby Emmons Costumes Antonia Belt With Hai-Ting Chinn, Ari Fliakos, Jennifer Griesbach, Hank Heijink, Andrew Nolen, Kamala Sankaram, Scott Shepherd, Harvey Valdes, Kate Valk, Judson Williams, John Young Production The Wooster Group, KunstenFESTIVALdesArts Coproduction Edinburgh International Festival, Productiehuis Rotterdam (Rotterdamse Schouwburg), Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, CC Belém (Lisboa)