A musical and literary piece, Arnold Schönberg’s Pierrot lunaire is a prolific musical playground for Marlene Monteiro Freitas. Accompanied by musical director Ingo Metzmacher and singer Sofia Jernberg, the director and choreographer shines a new light on Pierrot.
This is the second time Marlene Monteiro Freitas ventures into Arnold Schönberg’s universe, with Pierrot lunaire, commissioned by Wiener Festwochen, bringing new challenges and opportunities. Though to him, music and sound are shapeless “masses” which can be handled lightly of violently as one creates a piece, Pierrot lunaire imposes specific guidance on each creator, relating to ambiguities, pauses, ways of playing or acting. This also applies to the stage work, derived from Albert Giraud’s cycle of poems. Schönberg’s “melodramatic” masterpiece—his words—is comprised of twenty-one songs and twenty-one pieces. Over a century after its inception, it collides with Monteiro Freitas’s constantly inventive universe. Musical director Ingo Metzmacher and experimental singer Sofia Jernberg embark on this ever-changing journey with her, in an artistic companionship that brings out Schönberg’s modernity.
Photo: Nurith Wagner-Strauss