Europeras 1&2
John Cage’s Europeras 1&2 draw on arias, stage sets, costumes, figures, and gestures from the store of European opera history. Heiner Goebbels originally staged Europeras 1&2 for the Festival Ruhrtriennale in 2012. Costumes and sets from this production, rather than Cage’s music, will contribute to a dynamic landscape of objects, bodies and images, in permanent states of change. Goebbels’ own music and soundscapes will fill the space.
Image: Heiner Goebbels, Everything that happened and would happen (2018) at Mayfield, Manchester, October 2018. Photograph: Thanasis Deligiannis
Dancers in black jumpsuits twist and turn through hundreds of delicate beams of light. They reach up from their prison cells to clasp at daylight and bound about nervously on all fours. — Kate Connolly, Guardian
Selected Press
He hopes his audiences – who are being urged to wear sturdy footwear, dress up warm and leave babes-in-arms at home – will go away from his performance feeling different. “But maybe not in the sense that they get an answer. Maybe in the sense that now they have more questions.” — Kate Connolly, Guardian, 9 October 2018
Through the gloom at the rehearsal in September, the performers dragged heavy props around a stage set with tall, two-dimensional trees and a projected map of Germany. — Fisun Güner, The New York Times, 10 October 2018
“Everyone brings their own reality to the work” — Heiner Goebbels interviewed by Maya Black, Manchester Evening News, 3 October 2018
Elsewhere in this epic show, dazzling lighting effects, rolling rocks, pillars and even laundry trolleys complement the performers’ exhausting antics. — Kevin Bourke, Northern Soul, 11 October 2018
He has created a phantasmagoric, ever-changing landscape permeated by spoken text and film, and populated by 12 dancers and five musicians who perform for almost three hours amid a plethora of constantly manipulated props and objects. — Roslyn Sulcas, New York Times, 2 June 2019
No Comment
No Comment is a strand of the European TV channel Euronews which offers original, unedited footage of each day’s news with neither commentary nor mediation. Short clips are labelled with the date of the recording and the name of the location. The news ‘story’ can only be understood via the viewers’ imagination, combining time, location, sound, and image.
Image: Heiner Goebbels, Everything that happened and would happen (2018) at Mayfield, Manchester, October 2018. Photograph: Thanasis Deligiannis
Heiner Goebbels
Heiner Goebbels has worked with Artangel on two projects, Stifter's Dinge (2008) and Everything that happened and would happen (2018).
Inspired by an eclectic range of influences and sources, composer and director Heiner Goebbels’ fascination with literature, politics and anthropology informs richly textured visual compositions that integrate classical, pop, jazz and traditional indigenous music. Works by Goebbels performed in the UK include Songs of Wars I Have Seen, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 2007; Eraritjaritjaka, Edinburgh International Festival, 2004 and Hashirigaki, Barbican, London, 2002.
Goebbels works as a professor at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen and is President of the Theatre Academy Hessen, Germany. From 2012 to 2014 he was the artistic director of the International Festival of the Arts Ruhrtriennale.
Images: (left) The artist and performers at performance workshops of Heiner Goebbels’ Everything that happened and would happen (2018). Photograph: Killa Schuetze; (above) Heiner Goebbels speaking about Stifter’s Dinge at Ambika P3 in 2012 (above). Photograph: Ewa Herzog
Production Credits
Concept, Director — Heiner Goebbels
Video Design — René Liebert
Light Design — John Brown, Heiner Goebbels
Sound Design — Willi Bopp
Dramaturgy — Matthias Mohr
Assistants to the Director — Théo Arnulf, Niels Wehr
Observation & Support — Maud Blandel, Thanasis Deligiannis, Shiori Tsuchida
Technical Director— Georg Bugiel
Music — C.Emaille, G.Gebbia, C.Lartigau, L.Maurel, N.Perrin, O.Messiaen, H. Goebbels
Performers — Juan Felipe Amaya Gonzalez, Sandhya Daemgen, Antoine Effroy, Ismeni Espejel, Montserrat Gardó Castillo, Freddy Houndekindo, Tuan Ly, Thanh Nguyễn Duy, John Rowley, Annegret Schalke, Ildikó Tóth, Tyra Wigg
Musicians — Camille Emaille, Percussion; Gianni Gebbia; Clarinet, Saxophones; Cécile Lartigau. Ondes Martenot; Léo Maurel, Organ; Nicolas Perrin, Guitar, Electronics
Voices — Vincent Dugdale, Shiori Tsuchida, Thanasis Deligiannis
All set elements originally designed by Klaus Grünberg for John Cage: Europeras 1&2 (directed by Heiner Goebbels, Ruhrtriennale 2012)
Texts from Europeana by Patrik Ourednik
News Clips No Comment by Euronews
Click to read full credits for the Mayfield performance and workshops in Manchester, Essen, Paris, and Hanoi.
Image: From the performance workshops of Heiner Goebbels, Everything that happened and would happen (2018). Photograph: Killa Schuetze
Who made this possible?
Credits
Produced by Artangel. Co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW; WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, Artangel, Park Avenue Armory and Ruhrtriennale. The world premiere is co-presented with Artangel and Manchester International Festival (MIF) as a pre-Factory event. 14-18 NOW is supported from the National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
Artangel is supported by Arts Council England, and by the private patronage of The Artangel International Circle, Special Angels, Guardian Angels and The Company of Angels.
With the kind co-operation of Euronews.
Featuring extracts from EUROPEANA: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century by Patrik Ouředník.
Contextual programme supported by the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany London, with thanks to Goethe-Institut London. With grateful thanks to Goethe-Institute, Vietnam for support towards the participation of Thanh Nguyễn Duy.
