GREGORIUS UPON THE STONE

PREMIERE

2004

Düsseldorf

A CO-PRODUCTION OF THEATER DER KLÄNGE WITH ESTAMPIE MUNICH

“A legend told since the twelfth century, written down by Hartmann von Aue, adapted and embellished by Thomas Mann.”

Based on the medieval tale Gregorius the Poor Sinner by Hartmann von Aue, Thomas Mann wrote the novel The Holy Sinner. The story of double incest, arrogance, blindness and repentance — culminating in Gregorius becoming Pope — formed the basis for a music-theatre production by Theater der Klänge in renewed collaboration with the ensemble ESTAMPIE.

New to this production was the integration of live electronics into the musical process, developed by composer Thomas Neuhaus over the preceding years for Theater der Klänge. Early music met live electronics, theatre and dance. Music theatre, image theatre, dance theatre and minstrel narration — the aesthetic frame of a nearly two-hour evening whose music dared a conscious crossover between medieval sonority with ethnic instruments and electronic sound.

The principal characters were staged through scenic movement and dance; the monological and dialogical text was spoken musically by two narrators for all roles and commented on through song. This epic narrative style was the result of developments across the preceding productions Ludus Danielis, The Birds and Megalopolis.

In the time between the Düsseldorf and Munich runs, the ensemble filmed the material on location in 2004. That footage lay in storage until 2011, when it was edited into the feature film Gregorius upon the Stone, released on DVD in 2012. The theatre version was also the subject of an extensive dissertation on the reception of the Middle Ages in contemporary music theatre (Andrea Schindler, Reichert Verlag Wiesbaden 2009).

Early music and live electronics, dance inspired by Indian forms, and the voice of the wandering minstrel — Gregorius upon the Stone carried the collaboration with ESTAMPIE onto new sonic ground.