TRÄUME (2023) — emanuel gat dance

A choreographic work by Emanuel Gat
A personal response to Wesendonck Lieder and ‘Art and Revolution’ by R. Wagner

For the first-ever time, dance will feature at the Easter Festival, in the dramatic setting of the Felsenreitschule, with »Träume« (Dreams) an original creation by choreographer Emanuel Gat.

For his first edition as director of the Salzburg Easter Festival, Nikolaus Bachler innovates and opens the program to contemporary dance. Presented in the mythical concert hall of the Felsenreitschule. Träume (Dreams) by choreographer Emanuel Gat, will explore different facets of Wagnerian work.

The Israeli/French choreographer Emanuel Gat will present a work for the 14 dancers of his company that is inspired by Richard Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder. Gat will combine the five famous poems with excerpts from Wagner’s essay Art and Revolution. Träume [Dreams] is a choreographic work that engages with different facets of Wagner’s oeuvre. In the first act, excerpts from his revolutionary essay are juxtaposed with the poems by Mathilde Wesendonck in order to create a kind of textual score in a dialogue between the sexes. The second act unfolds to the music of the five Wesendonck Lieder (recorded version, Julia Varady, soprano - Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, direction).

For this creation, Emanuel Gat has imagined a scenography specially adapted to the dramatic stage of the Felsenreitschule, where it will be premiered, on April 6th and 7th 2023. Träume is thus conceived to be declined in specific versions, adapted to the atmosphere and uniqueness of each space where it will be performed.

The costumes are a new creation by Thomas Bradley, who previously designed those for Story Water (2018) and LOVETRAIN2020.

In a letter of June 1849 to Franz Liszt, one of his few influential allies at the time, Wagner wrote “I must make people afraid of me. Well, I have no money, but what I do have is an enormous desire to commit acts of artistic terrorism”.

Wagner had been an enthusiast for the revolutions of 1848 and had been an active participant in the Dresden Revolution of 1849, as a consequence of which he was forced to live for many years in exile from Germany. “Art and Revolution” (Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft) is one of a group of polemical articles he published in his exile, which helped characterise Wagner as an impractical and/or eccentric radical idealist at the time.

During that same period of change and turmoil, unfolded the circumstances under which Richard Wagner composed his Wesendonck Lieder (WWV 91, Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme). In May of 1849 the fall of the provisional government that led the Dresden rebellion put an end to Wagner’s revolutionary activities. He was forced to flee, first to Weimar, then, with the help of Liszt, to Zurich, Switzerland, where he sought the support of friends. The songs are settings of poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of one of Richard Wagner’s patrons. Wagner had become acquainted with Otto Wesendonck in Zürich, where he had fled on his escape from Saxony after the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849.

Otto Wesendonck allowed Wagner and his wife Minna to move into a cottage on the grounds for a nominal fee.The close proximity to Mathilde induced him to read to her each evening his work in progress. This intense inter-action with the poet-composer inspired Mathilde to compose five passionate poems of her own, which Wagner set for voice and piano. Mathilde later wrote in her memoirs that he took each of her poems upon their completion and gave to them a “supreme transfiguration and consecration” with his music. No name was given for the author of the texts at the first publication, it was not publicly revealed until after Mathilde’s death in 1902.

Wagner wrote “Art and Revolution” over two weeks in Paris and sent it to a French political journal, the National; they refused it, but it was published in Leipzig in 1849.

“Modern changes in society have resulted in the catastrophe that art has sold her soul and body to a far worse mistress - Commerce […] There are even many of our most popular artists who do not in the least conceal the fact, that they have no other ambition than to satisfy this shallow audience. They are wise in their generation; for when the prince leaves a heavy dinner, the banker a fatiguing financial operation, the working man a weary day of toil, and go to the theatre: they ask for rest, distraction, and amusement, and are in no mood for renewed effort and fresh expenditure of force. This argument is so convincing, that we can only reply by saying: it would be more decorous to employ for this purpose any other thing in the wide world, but not the body and soul of Art.”

Provocative, somewhat extreme in tone and utopian by nature, this text might give an insight into the artist’s state of mind at the period just before embarking on the process of creating some of his most accomplished work. It stands in stark contrast with the female voice of the Wesendonck Lieder poems, with their melancholic yearning an distinct sense of intimacy.

Alongside the textual and musical content which is at the heart of the choreography created for Träume, Felsenreitschule where the work will see its world premiere, serves as a major inspiration for an almost site-specific work, influencing the motions and distribution of choreographic flux. The unique atmosphere and dense historical context of the venue, will find its way into the piece, drawing ever expanding choreographic lines and structures.

Träume, wie wenn Frühlingssonne
Aus dem Schnee die Blüten kü.t,
Daß zu nie geahnter Wonne
Sie der neue Tag begrü.t,

Daß sie wachsen, daß sie blühen,
Träumend spenden ihren Duft,
Sanft an deiner Brust verglühen,
Und dann sinken in die Gruft.

Dreams, as when the Spring sun
Kisses blossoms from the snow,
So the new day might welcome them
In unimagined bliss,

So that they grow and flower,
Bestow their scent as in a dream,
Fade softly away on your breast
And sink into their grave.

Träume is a choreographic piece engaging with the different facets of Wagner’s work. Excerpts of his essay, will be juxtapositioned with Mathilde Wesendonck’s poems, to create a textual live masculine/feminine dialogue score for the first act of the piece, followed by a second act unfolding to the sounds of the five songs.

CREDITS

Music: R. Wagner, “Wesendonck Lieder” (WWV 91, Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme)
Julia Varady, soprano - Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, direction

Concept, choreography and lights: Emanuel Gat
Dancers: Eglantine Bart, Thomas Bradley, Robert Bridger, Gilad Jerusalmy, Péter Juhász, Michael Loehr, Emma Mouton, Eddie Oroyan, Rindra Rasoaveloson, Ichiro Sugae, Milena Twiehaus, Sara Wilhelmsson, Karolina Szymura, Jin Yong-Won.

Texts: Poems by Mathilde von Wesendonck “Art and revolution” by Richard Wagner, excerpts
Costumes: Thomas Bradley
Sound design: Frédéric Duru
Lights supervision and technical director: Guillaume Février

Company Management: Marjorie Carré
Production Management, Touring: Antonia Auday
Production: Emanuel Gat Dance
Coproduction: Salzburg Easter Festival, other coproducers in process.