A Page of Madness
A Page of Madness is Revue Blanche’s third multimedia project commissioned by Muziekcentrum De Bijloke. Once again, the socio-cultural context of the magazine ‘La Revue Blanche’ was the ensemble’s inspiration. Exoticism and Kawabata’s serene writings in particular, are at the heart of this programme. In the avant garde movie ‘A page of Madness’ from 1926 (with a screenplay by Kawabata), Japanese cinematographer Kinugasa paints the subjective observations of people living in a runaway asylum. Thought lost for almost half a…
Epistola Posteritati
For the most part, the music these ensembles excel in are half a millennium apart, but for this particular project, Revue Blanche and Psallentes have gone in search of common ground. They venture onto Italian territory, with music of the somewhat enigmatic but always poetic Salvatore Sciarrino (°1947), and texts from that other slightly mysterious but always poetic Italian, Petrarch (1304-1374). Among Petrarch’s works is a letter about himself and his ideas, addressed ‘to the future’ (Epistola posteritati). It gives…
Les femm’euses
Les Femm’euses gives the floor to the highly cultivated Greek-Byzantine Kassia. Her compositions – dating from the ninth century – form the common thread running through this programme. Next stop is the seventeenth century, with Francesca Caccini and Barbara Strozzi; the first probably being the early baroque’s most influential female composer; the latter, according to the chronicles, “Venice’s most prolific composer – male or female alike – of secular vocal music in print”. The main focus, however, is on contemporary…
Misia
Misia tells the musical story of Misia Sert (1872-1950), queen of the Parisian salons but sadly also of shattered dreams and broken hearts. Her lifetime of glory and tragedy, the fascinating artistic circles she travelled in and her sizzling passion for music are the common threads of this tale. Revue Blanche and Katharina Smets embark on a quest for a long-lost era: that of Misia’s Belle Epoque. Misia—of Belgian ancestry—was a key figure in the French fin de siècle…
