Kassandra

At the beginning of the 1980s, during the Cold War between East and West which culminated in the nuclear arms race, German author Christa Wolf (1929-2011) took up the myth of this tragic figure in her story titled “Kassandra”. The emblematic story, which was able to be published simultaneously in both the German Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic in 1983, suddenly catapulted the author to fame. In an encrypted form she related the antique myth to the authoritarian patriarchal conditions in her country.

Swiss composer Michael Jarrell placed the inner monologue of the intellectual “soothsayer” at the centre of his dramatic musical production. The grueling self-analysis, spoken by the charismatic Anna Clementi, is incorporated into the exciting music of a “miniature orchestra” that includes electronics and in which the drums play a prominent role.

“I have always found myself more drawn to images than to words, I suppose that is strange and a contradiction to my calling. The end will be an image, not a word. Images die before words”, says Kassandra.

The new staging of the monodrama takes up these thoughts. The imagery of Christa Wolf’s texts is emphasized using video sequences that give speaker Anna Clementi the opportunity to “enter” via live camera.