Holland Festival, 25 May – 26 June 2013
Launched in 1947, the Holland Festival is among the oldest European performing arts forums. The festival programme comprises both world premieres of works created especially for the Holland Festival and powerful performing arts events "road-tested" elsewhere.
One of the most interesting events featured in the festival's musical programme is definitely the 'Quartett' opera by the Italian composer Luca Francesconi. The idea of writing this piece was conceived by Francesconi while listening and watching the Latvian soprano Kristīne Opolais perform on stage. It was her voice that the new musical dramatic work was created; 'Quartett' was first performed two years ago at Milan's Teatro alla Scala - admittedly, not starring the Latvian soprano. The libretto was based on the German playwright Heiner Müller's identically titled play which, in its turn, was inspired by Choderlos de Laclos' famous 18th-century epistolary novel 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses' - a literary piece that questions the Enlightenment's rational view of the world and man, forcing it to capitulate in front of a dreadful and tragic perspective.
It was in light of an equally tragic perspective that the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's friendship with the musical genius that was Richard Wagner and the world of his art capitulated. The Belgian multi-disciplinary artist Jan Fabre is marking the bicentenary of Wagner's birth by creating the 'Tragedy of a Friendship' opera, a meditation on a friendship that started as a creative joy and ended as an emotional hell. Jan Fabre's collaborators on the new piece were the composer Moritz Eggert and writer Stefan Hertmans. One of the most diverse contemporary artists, Jan Fabre freely roams the territories of theatre, literature, dance, music and visual arts. You could even say that he inhabits all of the at once: after all, the Flemish artist crosses borders and boundaries as he pleases, always choosing for his current project tools which he finds most appropriate at any given time, for any given task, not bothering to try and stick to the rules and restrictions of any specific genre.
What matters to Fabre is the message he wants to deliver to his contemporaries; he only uses form to make it heard by as many as possible. He doesn't shrink from extreme measures and definitely belongs to the ranks of the most controversial artists. The main subjects which seem to concern Fabre in practically every project are metamorphosis and death.
Brett Bailey's 'Exhibit B', on the other hand, can safely be described as one of the most controversial projects featured at this year's Holland Festival. The concept of the South African artist's show was inspired by the 19th-century European and North American practice of exhibiting actual people from different - from the 'white man's' point of view, exotic - countries, touring fairs and festivals with these tableaux vivants. The heyday of these anthropologically-zoological exhibitions was the years between 1870 and 1940. In Europe, the phenomenon is closely linked with the flourishing of colonialism in mid-19th century when people brought back from the conquered countries were paraded in zoos, circuses and variety shows. Brett Bailey started to mount his human exhibitions in 2009, aiming to confront Europe with the unpleasant truth that African people are still often viewed as little more than animals.
It is definitely also well worth the time to get to know the theatre of the German composer and director Heiner Goebbels, one of the most distinctive and captivating theatrical experiences in the world. It is hinged on the question of how to tell a story to keep it open and perceivable on a variety of levels, to make it interesting for spectators who prefer to approach art from a musical angle, those who have honed their art-reading skills at exhibition halls, pure theatre aficionados and people who just love the free space left for the reader by literature. This year, Heiner Goebbels is bringing to Amsterdam his 'When the Mountain Changed Its Clothing'.
Programme: www.hollandfestival.nl
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