FRIDAY 29 APRIL

Libretto lecture #6: Fildelio - WALPURGIS
A bevy of actors, actresses, singers and vocalists read the libretto of Beethoven's Fidelio, a freedom opera that calls for love, compassion and justice.
Florestan is imprisoned in the dungeons of Pizarro's tower to prevent him from exposing his disgraces. Rocco, the prison warden, is ordered to starve Florestan out. But that is beyond Leonore, Florestan's loyal and heroic wife. She, disguised as Fidelio, comes to her husband's aid and joins Rocco as a prison guard.

Brassafrik
Traditional African question-and-answer motifs, afrobeat, highlife and European fanfare get a place in this melting pot of percussion and horns. Armed with brass, wood and leather, and with their surprising timing and exuberance, BRASSAFRIK plans to throw a memorable party!

SATURDAY, APRIL 30

Puccini Project - Simonne Moesen & Kaat De Windt
Butterfly, Mimi, Tosca and Liù: all ordinary women immortalised by Puccini as tragic heroines.
A singer/actress and a pianist/composer present their unconventional take on Puccini's famous opera heroines and their passions, contradictions and absurdities, their fragility as well as strength in their search for unity, truth and love.

Recall - Ana Naqe
A nostalgic, musical journey through the memories of an Albanian violinist-singer. Contemporary classical, improvised with snatches of folk music.
Commissioned by WALPURGIS, Ana is putting together a programme inspired by her Albanian roots especially for this FENIKS FESTIVAL.

BDE - WALPURGIS
A musical, cinematic and literary trip on the blurred line between fiction and non-fiction, between life and death
A collision with an unknown oncoming car causes an elderly man to become trapped in his car. He narrowly escapes death. For a few seconds, he recalls “things and scenes from previous lives, previous landscapes” that - he is sure - he never remembered before.

SUNDAY MAY 1

Medea Redux - Noorderbrugcompagnie Foundation
ism Els Roobroeck & Han Stubbe (DAAU)
Hey, someone is suffering. Let's look at him under the microscope! - Neil LaBute
In Medea Redux, the second monologue from Bash by US writer and filmmaker Neil LaBute, a young woman describes in detail everything that lies between that one school trip she took as an adolescent and the murder she commits on her son, 14 years later. In love, pregnant, disowned, infanticide. An aural portrait of a contemporary Medea.

Diary of a lost person - JANACEK (BiancoNero)
Rather yearn for love than wait for death.
Farmer's son abandons family for love of gypsy woman! Perhaps this was the headline accompanying the article that caused great commotion in the Czech Republic at the beginning of the last century and inspired Janácek to write this song cycle. In BiancoNero's contemporary interpretation, this ‘disappeared one’ is an elderly person in love up to his ears. Does his beloved Zefka really exist? Or is she just the product of his imagination that makes life in the old people's home bearable?

KWEST#1: The Brain - Nele Van den Broeck
The one-and-a-half kilograms of flesh under our skull is the source of all our thoughts, emotions and memories. But as to exactly how that brain works, we can only break our heads...
KWEST#1: The Brain is the first of a series of theatrical-scientific lectures in which Nele Van den Broeck, armed with her ukulele and a good dose of humour, explains the workings of the brain and the latest discoveries in neurology.
Master's thesis by Nele Van den Broeck, Drama programme, Hogeschool Gent KASK (supervisor Sam Bogaerts)

BUFFET
WALPURGIS closes the FENIKS FESTIVAL festively with a buffet where audience and performers sit together at the table.

SUNDAY MAY 8

BIM BAM BOM - Glasbak vzw
An urban composition on location featuring forgotten children's songs from around the world.
BIM BAM BOM brings all these sounds together in an urban composition and choreography for two children's choirs and a soprano. Musically, the many singing voices are supported by a carillon, ice cream cart sirens and the sound of a baby weeping. Of course, the urban setting is used as a backdrop; the district house in which the carillon is located is the centrepiece.