Tragedy of a Friendship

Especially for the Wagner year 2013, Jan Fabre – himself a great Wagner lover – pays a tribute to the composer and the power of his imagination. He creates 13 scenes, each of them inspired by one of Wagner’s 13 operas. At the centre of the performance is the turbulent friendship between Wagner and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Author Stefan Hertmans wrote the libretto. The German composer and pianist Moritz Eggert created compositions and soundscapes. The rich stage images of Fabre, the poetical reflections of Hertmans and the combination of Eggert’s sounds with Wagner’s arias form a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ that bewilders, moves ánd shocks. “Inspired by Wagner’s iconic personages, Fabre captures the deterioration of mankind in powerful (sometimes even funny) images. The strongest scenes are those in which music, song, dance and film reinforce one another, f.ex. the scene in which the dancers catch arias in plastic bags. This Fabre trip is an unforgettable, tremendous experience”, Els Van Steenberghe writes in Knack. Between the lines, Tragedy of a Friendship grows from a personal homage into an ode to the position of art between thinking and dreaming. “The stage becomes a museum”, says Jan Fabre, “and what is a museum ? You preserve things in it. But a museum can also be a lab : what else could opera still be ? How do you deal with the medium ?”

Free busses from:
* Kortrijk (23/11) départure at 16h00 from Conservatorium
* Waregem (23/11) départure at 16h00 from CC De Schakel
* Tournai (23/11) départure at 16h30 from la maison de la culture
* Comines (23/11) départure at 16h00 from CC Comines
* Tielt (25/11) départure from Theater Malpertuis
* Valenciennes (25/11) départure at 18h30 from la Place Poterne