Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

Author Maurice Maeterlinck won the Nobel Prize in Literature exactly one hundred years ago, and is still the only Belgian ever to have received it. The perfect reason to create a new opera based on the work of Maeterlinck. With shreds of Maeterlinck’s work, director Stef Lernous (Abattoir Fermé) creates a strange and mysterious fairytale in which basic human fears and fantasies play a lead role. All of Maeterlinck’s signature elements make an appearance in the opera: kings and queens, blind people and lovers, vulnerable girls and old men, ships and seas, hunters and prey, the shadow and the moon, blue rooms and dark towers. In a suggestive, mystic, and sometimes perverted atmosphere, the characters move towards each other in their desire for each other and the creatures of their dreams.

The flux of images created by Lernous will defy the brand new composition by Dirk D’Ase (Bregenzer Festspiele, Musikverein Wien, Neue Oper Wien, ...).