“Gregorius on the stone – a legend about incest, love, atonement and choosing” was called our creation in a renewed cooperation with the music ensemble ESTAMPIE in the year 2004.
Based on Harmann von Aue’s middle-age story “Gregorius”, Thomas Mann wrote the novel “Der Erwählte”. The story deals with double incest, arrogance, dazzle, remorse —which, finally, led “Gregorius” to become the Pope – and this was the basis for a theatrical-musical adaptation by the Theater der Klänge in a joint work with the “ESTAMPIE” ensemble specialized in ancient music.
Those who remember the successful 1995 production “LUDUS DANIELIS“, which was also a joint work by both Ensembles, can imagine what is to be expected from a theatrical-musical directing by J. U. Lensing. The integration of live electronics in the musical process was developed by composer Thomas Neuhaus for the performances of Theater der Klaenge during the years 2000 until 2004. Ancient music is put together with live electronics, theatre and dance. The aesthetic framework includes musical theatre, image theatre, dance theatre and stories by minstlers, in a play that lasted for two hours. Besides, a music that ventures into the confluence of medieval sounds performed by ethnic instruments and electronic sounds.
Clemente Fernandez and J.U.Lensing wrote a new linguistic version based on von Aues and Manns texts. Besides, the central figures performed as dancers while the story was spoken in musically acompanied monologic form of two narrators and the singing voices of ESTAMPIE. This “epic narrative style” was a result of numerous developments, which were developed in the preceding pieces “LUDUS DANIELIS”, “The Birds“ and “Megalopolis“.
The result in form of a music-theatre-staging was played with success in Dusseldorf and Munich. In 2004 the time between the Dusseldorf and Munich performances was used by the relatively small ensembe for a shooting of the scenic material in real locations. This videomaterial camped down till 2011 in a box and on the occasion of archiving works in 2012 the feature “Gregorius on the stone” was edited and resulted in a feature-film which is available since then on DVD.
The theatrical version was material for an extensive PHD-thesis on the subject “Middle Ages adoption at the contemporary music theatre” from Andrea Schindler M.A at the university of Bamberg in 2009.