Metamorphosis of Melancholy

Conductor, Concept Thomas Hengelbrock
Costume Design Andreas Uhmann, Gabi Bartels
Lighting Design Dietrich Körner
Dramatic Adviser Thomas Hengelbrock, Thomas Krümpelmann

Doctor Melancholicus Graham F. Valentine

Balthasar-Neumann-Chor and Soloists
Balthasar-Neumann-Ensemble

Melancholy – a fundamental condition of man. An unusual depiction of its varied manifestations by Robert Burton, published in 1621 in the “Anatomy of Melancholy”, is the heart of the staged performance under the direction of Thomas Hengelbrock. A musical-literary-theatrical evening that dares to make an attempt at interpreting the depths of one’s own self, to show the “metamorphosis of melancholy,” the wistful, the stubborn, the scurrilous, and the comforting in the stunningly beautiful garment of great art.

The texts of Robert Burton, William Shakespeare, and other poets of the seventeenth century are combined with madrigals, opera scenes, and consort music by John Dowland, Thomas Morley, John Eccles, Händel, and Henry Purcell, among others. The seductively beautiful music underscores and dominates every thought, as bizarre as it might be, in the labyrinth of existence.

Together with the Balthasar Neumann Choir and Ensemble, actor Graham F. Valentine puts the portrayal of a Faustian explorer of the world and the soul into a fascinating, higher context. As Dr. Melancholicus he examines, within the frame-work of a scientific lecture to his pupils, the phenomenon of melancholy: at first reservedly describing, then increasingly affected by this “fatal illness” from which in the end he himself can no longer escape.

“In this production, which really sets standards for historical music, every- body, even the singers and instrumentalists, are simultaneously actors. No gesture, not even the smallest movement is an accident here; everything is a part of a total art work that the director developed with the most subtle means to a real story in which the Baroque view of the world opens up like a panorama. And how lovingly, artificial, and simultaneously enter- taining it’s done!” Stuttgarter Zeitung

“Music that in gentle oscillations plumbs the depths of emotional states, transforming them into moods that in turn are so euphoniously taken up and intensively interpreted by the Ensemble and the exquisite soloists of the Choir that pain becomes harmony, and sorrow offers peace of mind. That which is foreign, distant comes very close. Above all when a speech artist and virtuoso of melancholic under-statement such as Graham Valentine acts as the link between the music and the stage. There is so much magic, so much depth, so much poetry …” Stuttgarter Nachrichten

“Enchantment, enthusiasm, ovations.” Badische Zeitung