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LOD / Fabrice Murgia & Daan Janssens
Wed 6 Nov and Fri 8 Nov
6 Nov
and
8 Nov

LOD composer Daan Janssens and director Fabrice Murgia are tackling the existential issues in Louis Paul Boon’s novel.

A man, a woman and a girl share a house. The man spends his days in a company’s ice cellar. To kill time he collects newspaper cuttings on all sorts of gruesome events. In the meantime, his hyperactive wife loses herself in organising the household and making children’s clothes that she sells through her brother-in-law. The housemaid who assists her plays is the main focus of the man’s desires. In Menuet, this classic triangular relationship unfolds into a grand tragedy on a domestic scale.

Louis Paul Boons meesterwerk op muziek

Part of

LOD composer Daan Janssens and director Fabrice Murgia are tackling the existential issues in Louis Paul Boon’s novel. The simple facts are presented three times in succession, each time through the eyes of one of the characters. This gives this banal situation a tragic depth. Solitude, shame and sexual desire are the basis for the 3D vision of man shown here. Menuet sketches a portrait of lonely people who hover between the normal and the abnormal, between speaking and silence. Daan Janssens and Fabrice Murgia go in search of this tension in the conviction that real life lies in this in-between zone.

The composer Daan Janssens and director Fabrice Murgia turn Boon’s Menuet into an ethereal opera trip.

Annemarie Peeters in De Standaard - 21.04.2017

Credits

compositon Daan Janssens direction Fabrice Murgia after Menuet by Louis Paul Boon, translated to German by Barbara and Alfred Antkowiak; published as Menuett by Aufbau-Verlag Berlin und Weimar, 1975; © Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin 1975, 2008. The novel is available in this edition: Alexander Verlag, Berlin dramaturgy Barbara Engelhardt conducted by Filip Rathé singers Cécile Granger (soprano), Raimund Nolte (baritone), Tineke Van Ingelgem (soprano), Ekaterina Levental (soprano) ensemble SPECTRA: Jan Sciffer (cello), Lisa De Boos (contrabass, at Luxembourg), Ben Faes (contrabass, at Brussels & Strasbourg), Gabi Sultana (piano), An Raskin (bajan), Frank Van Eycken (percussion), Charles Michiels (clarinet), Wim Van Volsem (bassoon), Simon Haspeslagh (horn), Pieter Vandermeiren (trombone) assistant director Maxime Glaude stylist Emilie Jonet sculptures Anne Marcq, Anne Goldschmidt video design Giacinto Caponio light design Enrico Bagnoli set design Vincent Lemaire copier Frederik Neyrinck repetitor Gabi Sultana technical coordination Nic Roseeuw technics Kurt Bethuyne, Victor Hidalgo, Wim Picqueur, Chris Vanneste development electronics Centre Henri Pousseur production manager Isabel Vermeulen production LOD muziektheater coproduction Théâtre National Wallonie – Bruxelles, deSingel, SPECTRA Ensemble, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Le Maillon - Théâtre de Strasbourg Scène européenne, Artara, La Monnaie / De Munt, Centre Henri Pousseur with the support of ENOA : CREATIVE EUROPE PROGRAMME OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, Cultureel Akkoord Vlaamse Gemeenschap & Franse Gemeenschap