Winterreise – F. Schubert

PREMIERE 10 NOVEMBER 2015

10, 16, 17, 23, 24 November 2015

Tenor: Christos Kechris
Actor: Thanassis Dovris
Piano: Michalis Pxpapetrou

Director: Themelis Glynatsis
Set – Costumes: Pantelis Makkas, Eleftheria Arapoglou, Themelis Glynatsis
Video: Pantelis Makkas
Light: Stella Kaltsou

Schubert’s Winterreise (D.911, op.89) is considered to be the ultimate work of the Romantic song-cycle tradition. One of the final compositions of the Austrian composer, based on poems by Wilhelm Müller, Winterreise is one of Schubert’s most enigmatic and melancholic works, and of the entire Austro-German Romantic canon. Having as its core the wandering of a youth who experiences a profound crisis of unrequited love, Winterreise offers the audience an almost theatrical monologue about melancholy, loneliness and death. This monologue is based on fragmentary, intensely subjective impressions of wintry landscapes that in essence reflect the wanderer’s psyche. Having this narrative as a starting-point, the performance will focus on issues of solitude, privacy and depression, as well as of the conscious, almost stubborn, detachment of the individual from any sense of historical reality. After his critically acclaimed performances at the Onassis Cultural Centre (Romanticism: a performance based on Hermann Broch’s “The Sleepwalkers”) and the Athens Festival (Berenice), the theatre director Themelis Glynatsis, considered “one of the most outstanding voices of contemporary Greek theatre”, returns to the theme of wandering and of subjective landscapes that underline his entire artistic output. One of the most talented tenors of his generations, Christos Kechris, meets the up-and-coming actor Thanasis Dovris and renowned pianist Michalis Papapetrou in a modern, philosophical and highly emotive performance.