If belief is a creative power can scepticism then destroy creative powers?
The starting point for WALPURGIS' latest musical theatre creation is the chamber opera The Medium by Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti.
The opera tells the story of Baba, an elderly woman, who tries to survive by staging séances with the help of her teenage daughter Monica and Toby, a street boy who cannot speak. In those séances, the spirits of children who died young are summoned. A dangerous game as it turns out. For gradually Baba loses her control over reality and becomes increasingly paranoid. In a fit of insanity, she kills Toby.
The Medium, reconstruction of a murder is neither a classic opera nor a soggy whodunit, but a nightmarish trip, in which Baba is once again confronted with the boy's murder.
an exciting cast
Mezzo-soprano Eurudike The Executioner regularly collaborates with WALPURGIS and is also one of the core members of Peeping Tom, a dance company with which she has toured the world for several years.
Actress Simone Milsdochter besides in the theatre (KVS, Laika, Theater Zuidpool, BZB...) can also be seen on television (Wolves, Witse, Flikken ), the French film Copacabana starring Isabelle Hupert and the Dutch feature film Infiltrator.
Composer and pianist Guy Van Nueten creates exciting music score. He writes both for rock bands (Tom Barman, dEUS, Admiral Freebee, Zita Swoon, Daan,...), theatre (HETPALEIS,...), film (Pulsar by Stockman), dance (Les Ballets C de la B) as for classical orchestra (deFilharmonie).
Reviews
"Baba's pangs of conscience, the helplessness Eurudike The Executioner perfectly puts down while Milsdochter manages to tell her dark history in a very intriguing way in a whisper too, so that the audience hangs on her lips in dead silence. (...) The lament of a broken woman rarely sounded so fascinating and a familiar Grimm fairy tale delicately woven through it rarely so mysterious."
Concertnews.be **, Bert Hertogs, 14 January 2015
"The three original arias of Baba are left over from Menotti's opera, the rest of the score was composed by Guy Van Neuten. This new combination works very well. The texts spoken over them seem to be part of the score, which makes the music a handsome whole."
FrontView Magazine, Anouk Anthonissen, 19 January 2015
"Mezzo-soprano Eurudike De Beul manages to evoke the poignant atmosphere with her shrill vocal timbres in a grim manner. Together with actress Simone Milsdochter, she gives shape to an oppressive house clos, a microcosm in which the characters are hopelessly trapped. Their struggles, sighs and pain flow together in a multi-layered and compact performance that leads in a restrained and intense way to a final climax.
Savour the interplay of sound, words, music and visual effects. Finally, be left bewildered when, after 50 minutes, the lingering tension arc is finally allowed to ónspire. And numerous questions remain unanswered. A challenge for the theatre connoisseur, who can work creatively with the puzzle pieces provided."
't Perdiodiekske, Frank Kloeck, 19 January 2015
"The screeching sounds that composer/pianist Guy Van Nueten added to the composition highlighted the throat-grabbing drama. The setting made it all the more haunting."
Classical Central, Bernard Cornelis, 22 January 2015
"WALPURGIS' adaptation emphasises hopeless poverty and disillusionment as reasons for people to proceed to fatal acts. What grabbed Baba's throat in that particular séance remains a mystery. Reverting to a fairy tale can be read as a paean to the power of stories that acknowledge their own inability to create immediate clarity, and that leave the mystery intact. A paean also to what happens on stage: the invocation of voices that might yet somehow be able to put the unspeakable into words.(...)
WALPURGIS plays its musical trump cards with verve: little is as impressive as hearing Eurudike De Beulul sing on that dark square metre. Also clever is the way Guy Van Nueten's composition effortlessly sets the mood."
Etcetera, Michael Bellon, 28 January 2015
Report at Bar du Matin, Radio 1, 11 January 2015
Public comments
"Very haunting." - Danielle
"Beautifully sung, very mystical atmosphere" - anonymous
"The vocals provided the right atmosphere. Lighting also top notch, as did the alternation between Dutch and English lyrics. Beautiful!" - anonymous
