Events

With the founding of WALPURGIS in 1987, singer and music theatre maker Judith Vindevogel wanted to be able to develop not only as a performer but also as a creative artist. The need to be able to colour outside the rigid lines of classical opera and musical was great. Inspired by her collaboration with Leporello and Maatschappij Discordia (NL), Vindevogel wanted to be able to experiment freely with new forms of music theatre and more horizontal ways of working together.

In the early 1990s, thanks to the networking talents of co-founder Lukas Pairon, WALPURGIS gained more and more fame outside the country as a Flemish pioneer of contemporary music theatre.

With the installation of its own musical theatre workshop in 1998, the organisation of the annual PHOENIX FESTIVAL and associated residencies and workshops, the perfect humus soil was created for an ever-growing, multi-voiced and dynamic musical theatre community of singers, actors, musicians, dancers, visual artists, composers and writers. In early 2000, Stef Depover came on board to further enrich the artistic operation with his imagination and technical skills, as in-house scenographer.

In 2010, he broke away with Port 010 entered a new period in which ways were increasingly sought to include the public - and more vulnerable groups in particular - as travel companions during a creation process. A good example of this was the reading together project and the subsequent trip to Marstal for the Danish premiere of We, the drowned (2019). Thus, slowly but surely, the integral operation of WALPURGIS became more and more a reflection of the society it dreamed of: generous, sustainable, constantly evolving and unafraid of contradictions and extremes.

Over the past 35 years, WALPURGIS has developed, created and presented contemporary music theatre that amazes, stimulates the imagination, moves and provokes thought: from large-scale site-specific performances, intimate fairy-tale operas, libretto readings to experimental music theatre. Some projects also had a second life outside the performing arts as CD, audiobook, animation film, expo, podcast or essay collection.

High-profile musical theatre performances included:

Mignon #1 (1989), first WALPURGIS creation

The Soluble Fish (1994)

Charms (1997)

The Slope of the Old Wives / La Colline des Vieilles Dames (2002-2003)

Les Noces/Svadebka/The Wedding (2005-2013)

Café Bohème (2013-2014)

Princess Turandot / Princesse Turandot (2011-2014)

Fidelio (2015-2020)

Libretto lecture #12: Silla revisited (2017)

Three Strong Women / Trois Femmes Fortes (2018-2024)

We, the Drowned / We, the drowned / Vi, the drowned (2019-2021)

That silly Jan (2021-2022)

In autumn 2021, Judith Vindevogel drew up the new policies for an artist run organisation with a focus on job development and with a focus on more-than-human life. An important preliminary step in the transformation from WALPURGIS to Rif, and Rif as the first Belgian Zoöp.