About This Show
For well over a century, the image of a mysteriously smiling 19th-century death mask of an unknown young woman drowned in the Seine has exerted a powerful hold on the imaginations of artists, composers and philosophers. Captured in the dawn of the photographic age, it has become an icon of beauty and femininity, a symbol of transience and a mystery for the ages.
Developed in part during a Snape Residency, this collaboration between composer, writer, architect and photographer attempts to address these themes of a visual age by creating a music drama from one of Europe’s most enduring modern myths. Projected film and images wrap themselves round Frederik Neyrinck’s flickering, ghostly score, and the clarity of boundaries between protaganists, and even between performers and audience blurs, dissolves and fades like an over-exposed photo. UK Premiere. Sung in Engish. Please note that this performance includes intermittent strobe lighting effects.