Melencolia

For many centuries, melancholy was interpreted in various and often contradictory ways. The puzzling polyhedron in Albrecht Dürer’s famous copperplate engraving ›Melencolia I‹ has become a symbol for the unsolvable amidst the human desire for salvation and the rational demystification of the world.

The premiere of ›Melencolia‹ musically explores these opposites. An opera as hypertext that transforms into space, in which sound, light, body and image sources establish themselves as elementary particles, which then regroup themselves in a continuous process of transformation. The liberated and playful yet strict way in which ›Melencolia‹ deals with stereotypes from romance, pop and kitsch in caricatures, blurs, disengagement and conflict with digital transformation establishes a parallel world to the indifference of the universe.

Together, composer Brigitta Muntendorf and dramaturge Moritz Lobeck, designed a scenery of instrumental islands and miniature studios that transform plain stages into overwhelming pictorial worlds and places of longing. The supposedly strict composition and musical form and the digital transformation centre on elementary questions such as »How did we get here« and »How are we going to get out«.