dagboek van een verdwenene
The form of The diary of the one who disappeared is unique: a series of 22 songs for tenor and piano, with an addition of three songs in the middle for a small choirof women and a mezzosoprano representing the gypsy girl Zefka. Ivo van Hove directs top singers Ed Lyon, Peter Gijsbertsen and Marie Hamard, and ITA actors Hugo Koolschijn and Gijs Scholten van Aschat.
Fascinated by voices, Belgian composer Annelies Van Parys writes a coda to this touching love story. The diary of the one who disappeared is a coproduction with Muziektheater Transparant from Antwerp. We previously collaborated with them for Kings of war.
On tour: Antwerp
The duration is 75 minutes, no intermission
About the play
It is 1917 when Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) meets Kamila Stösslová, who is almost forty years younger than him, in a health resort. She is married and has two children. This does not prevent Janáček from falling deeply in love with her. The relationship remains platonic, but he will remain obsessed with her until his death, with more than 700 ardent letters to prove it. Kamila inspires him to write some of his most important operas, such as Katya Kabanová and The Makropulos Affair.
A year earlier, Janáček read an anonymous series of poems in a newspaper about Janik, a village boy who falls madly in love with a gypsy girl and leaves everything behind to follow her. The composer sees his feelings for Kamila reflected in the poems. Based on the poems, he writes a series of songs that can be best described as an intimate self-portrait. Will Janik’s desire for passion free him from his suffocating surroundings? Or is he wasting his entire existence on an illusion?
Ivo van Hove has been director of Internationaal Theater Amsterdam since 2001.
In season 22|23, he will be directing My Heavenly Favourite (Marieke Lucas Rijneveld) at ITA and his directing of Age of rage, A little life, The Damned, Battles and metamorphoses of a woman, Kings of War and Who killed my father will be reprised.
Credits
director Ivo van Hove
vocalist Ed Lyon, Marie Hamard
dramaturge Krystian Lada
scenographer, light design Jan Versweyveld
composer Annelies Van Parys, Leoš Janáček
musician Kooracademie De Munt, Lada Valešová
costumes An D'Huys
assistant scenographer Ramón Huijbrechts
coproducer Beijing Music Festival, De Munt/La Monnaie, Kaaitheater, Klarafestival, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Operadagen Rotterdam
producer Muziektheater Transparant