MEDIATHEK

More than any generation before us, we are preoccupied with love. Isn’t it after all the most individual of all emotions? And aren’t our love stories, like we ourselves, utterly unique? Imagine we are wrong. And love isn’t that personal at all, but the most common and universal of all emotions.
 The characters and the scenery change, but the narrative of love is as old as mankind itself. The Great and Ruinous lovers of old tales have shaped our subconscious image of Romantic Love. Their stories form a huge Archive, a Collective Consciousness of human love, containing all love songs ever written. Claudio Monteverdi hunted Amor down in his Madrigali Guerrieri et Amorosi, Claude Vivier tried to grasp the essence of Eros in his Love Songs, whereas José Sanchez-Verdu focusses on Thanatos in his Scriptura Antigua.
 In Annelies Van Parys’ song cycle Ah, cette Fable an angel is trapped by his mortal lover: if it stays on earth, it will die, if it takes wing, its lover won’t survive. As this little tragedy unfolds, the Archive starts to resonate with it. Words, sounds and feelings trigger associations and memories of previous passions, both sacred and profane. Echoes and fragments of other, older love songs attach themselves to this new tale, interrupt it and complement it, thus pushing the story into new directions.
 With music by Annelies Van Parys, José Sanchez-Verdu, Claude Vivier, Claudio Monteverdi & many others (from Mozart to Madonna)