In Scenatet’s staging of the Italian avantgarde-composer Salvatore Sciarrino Aspern Suite (1987) for soprano and ensemble which was premiered at KLANG-Festival 2018, the ensemble transforms an already highly phantasmatic piece into something that can only be described as hallucinatory.

Based on the American author Henry James’ novella The Aspern Papers (1888), which centers around a man who stoops to increasingly unscrupulous behavior to obtain the unpublished papers of a famous writer from his dying widow, Sciarrino’s work accentuates the enigmatic quality of the original text. Just as it is never revealed, in the novella, what is actually contained within the titular papers, the plot is rendered increasingly obscure by Sciarrino, allowing only the story’s darkly mysterious mood and the emotional tension to remain in his quiet and spacious piece.

In turn, Scenatet’s staging shrouds the work in a surreal and highly sensorial atmosphere created by light, video, and stage design, removing the piece from the story’s specific physical location – Venice – and thereby allowing the audience to immerse themselves in the abstract, ghostly realm of absence, isolation, and exile.

“Scenatet’s lighting, video art and misty, watery darkness linked arms with the quietly melodramatic atmosphere on which Aspern’s events gain import and implication, and through which we might begin to imagine what they mean.”

“KLANG Festival ended with an insanely beautiful combination of desperate bel canto in slowmotion and delicate, transparent sounds.”

Director and scenographer: Anna Berit Asp Christensen
Rehearsal conductor: Martin Nagashima Toft
Light design: Mikkel Jensen
Visuals: Feileacan McCormick
Production manager: Mette Hornbek Hansen
Performers: Scenatet
Soloist: Signe Asmussen

The Danish Arts Foundation