Eine Winterreise, with Anne Sofie von Otter
An intimate musical fresco staged by Christof Loy
Cast
Christof Loy — Stage director
Herbert Murauer — Set and costume design
Roland Edrich — Lighting designer
Niels Nuijten — Dramaturgy
Friedrich Gatz — Video
Anne Sofie von Otter — He
Kristian Bezuidenhout — The Pianist
Claudio Rado — The Violinist
Program notes
At Switzerland's Theater Basel, internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter embodies one of Austria's most illustrious composers, Franz Schubert. In an intimate musical fresco staged by Christof Loy, the composer visits the ghosts of his past, including his younger self (Nicolas Franciscus), his friend and poet Franz von Schober (Kristian Alm), a courtesan (Matilda Gustafsson), and Viola, one of his Lieder personified as a young woman (Giulia Tornarolli).
Thirty years old and suffering from illness and depression, Schubert found solace in Wilhelm Müller’s book of poems, Winterreise. Inspired, the composer set the poems to music, emphasizing the inherent melancholy and despair of the texts to echo his own condition. For this innovative production, Loy and Von Otter selected six of Schubert’s original melodies, supplementing them with three excerpts from Schwanengesang (“Swan Song”), a piece from Die Schöne Müllerin (“The Fair Maid of the Mill”) and several orchestral passages from the composer's abundant oeuvre, to create an unmissable and unforgettable portrait of the great father of Lieder.
