Zauberland (Magic Land)

As violence blazes across the Near East, a young woman waits at a European border hoping to enter Zauberland ― a magic world of security and peace. But when she falls asleep, her dreams are haunted by strange images of the burnt-out city she has been forced to abandon.

Schumann’s Dichterliebe ― a setting of 16 poems by Heinrich Heine ― is a quintessential work of European Romanticism, infused with yearning for love and for fairy-tale landscapes which no longer exist.

Composer Bernard Foccroulle and writer Martin Crimp have created 16 new songs to be performed seamlessly alongside Schumann and Heine’s original work. While never losing sight of the pure beauty of the lyric, they open up a new dramatic dialogue between past and present, and between “Fortress Europe” and its eastern Mediterranean origins.

 

Armed poets come to fill their cages. Look ! ―
massing in al-Medina souk
the line for singing birds winds on ― on ―
like the melisma of love-song.