Il Teorema di Pasolini

In the organizer's words:

With his 1968 film "Teorema," Pasolini formulated a radical reckoning with the bourgeoisie: the upper-middle-class family at the center of the work is held together only by conventions, and the erotic seductive power of a stranger alone is enough to cause this ossified system to break apart. Battistelli has been fascinated by "Teorema" ever since he first set the material to music for the Munich Biennale in 1992 at Henze's suggestion, then as a chamber opera with silent actors. Now, 30 years later, Battistelli is shaping the Pasolini original as a grand opera ... Conductor: Daniel Cohen; Director: Dead Centre; With Ángeles Blancas Gulin, Davide Damiani, Monica Bacelli, Nikolay Borchev, Meechot Marrero, Andrei Danilov
About the play "Teorema", published in 1968 both as a film and in novel form, is not only one of Pier Paolo Pasolini's most famous works, but also one of his most radical. Using the example of an Italian industrialist family, Pasolini diagnoses the disintegration of bourgeois society. In turn, all the members of this family are seduced by a young man who shows up as a guest in the house. This experience makes it impossible for all of them to continue living in their ossified conventions, and each one tries, in his own way, to free himself from the constraints that have hitherto determined his existence. While the maid Emilia finds her fulfillment in faith, the son chooses an existence as an artist; while the daughter goes mad and the mother seeks her salvation in indiscriminate sexual adventures, the father leaves all possessions behind.

Early on, none other than the great German composer Hans Werner Henze recognized the music-theatrical potential of "Teorema" and secured the rights to the material. Henze did not write the opera himself, however, but as director of the Munich Music Biennale entrusted the Italian composer Giorgio Battistelli, who had already caused a worldwide sensation at the time with his experimental opera EXPERIMENTUM MUNDI, with the setting. In 1992, a first version of TEOREMA was created as part of a chamber opera with silent performers. Now, 30 years later, Battistelli dares to tackle the material again, turning it into a full-length opera with singers and a large orchestra, and incorporating into the setting all the experience that has made him one of the most important contemporary opera composers in the meantime with works such as RICHARD III and, most recently, GIULIO CESARE.

About the productionWith the production of IL TEOREMA DI PASOLINI the British-Irish theater collective Dead Centre presents itself for the first time on the stage of an opera house. In the field of theater, Dead Centre has established itself as one of the most interesting directing teams with its works shown internationally at festivals, but also with its productions for Vienna's Burgtheater and Schaubühne Berlin. In 2019, they ventured into musical theater for the first time with their production of Olga Neuwirth's opera BÄHLAMMS FEST for the Ruhrtriennale. Characteristic of their work are illusionistic effects that blur the boundaries between fiction and reality and ensure a cinematic vividness of the stage action. This content has been machine translated.