Revue Blanche & Katharina Smets

How do you deal with the death of a loved one? What does it mean to live on in the presence of absence? Is there hope to be found in memory, in the arts, in the encounter with the other? And is every goodbye really a new beginning? After the compelling Misia, the ensemble Revue Blanche is creating a new performance with audio artist Katharina Smets.

Nenia - literally ‘song for the dead’ - is somewhere between a concert, radio play and sound poem. Composer Frederik Neyrinck is writing a brand-new score, custom-tailored for this unique quintet. In doing so, he was inspired by Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo, about the mythical poet-singer who descends into the underworld to retrieve his beloved. Katharina Smets, the four musicians and videographer Lise Bruyneel guide the listener through a magical-realist world between dream and parable, darkness and light.

Nenia © Julie Calbert