Grace Ellen Barkey is staging Der Abschied, the last in Gustav Mahler’s cycle of songs Das Lied von der Erde. FOREVER is probably the most fragile staging ever of this song and that is what makes it such a success.

Rating: ****

In a nutshell: With its fragile porcelain objects, colourful nature films and intimist singing, in FOREVER Barkey found an impressively intimate and extraordinarily beautiful way of depicting the most intense moment in life: the moment when you are face to face with death and wish for nothing more than a few words to murmur while you peer at the Grim Reaper and hope that he will pass you by once more, because he makes you realise how superbly wonderful life on earth is.

Highlight:

In the closing image, which we will not give away, Maarten Seghers’ singing, the video projection and the porcelain installation merge almost literally into a single image that reverberates into eternity.

Quote:

‘You’ll never see me in the wide world again / My heart lies waiting silently until it’s time.’

In 1909 Gustav Mahler completed his song cycle Das Lied von der Erde. It was his farewell gesture to the world, having learnt that he was suffering from a terminal heart disease. Der Abschied is the final song in the series. Mahler here bids the world a true farewell and is ready to depart.

When, for highly personal reasons, Grace Ellen Barkey was compelled, like Mahler, to reflect on taking leave of life, she had no second thoughts: she would definitely stage Mahler’s Der Abschied. And she would do so in the purest and most fragile way, without too much melodrama. So she did not drum up a strapping opera singer who would present the song in a breathtakingly virtuoso manner. No. On the contrary. She asked the artist, musician and Needcompany performer Maarten Seghers. He can sing, but he is by no means an opera singer. And also, Barkey asked him to sing not only the vocal part, but also all the other parts in the song: the violin part, the horn part and so on.

Seghers occupies a landscape of porcelain leaves designed by Barkey together with Lot Lemm. The Grim Reaper circles around silently but ominously, with his stick-like legs dangling just above the ground. The timeless landscape represents the vague zone between life and death. At the start of the performance, a porcelain object literally shifts the audience’s attention from life (in the auditorium) to death’s waiting room (the stage).

Seghers sings with a sometimes astonished, sometimes amused and then dead serious expression on his face. This makes him a disarming performer, and he immediately wins over the audience and carries them with him on his journey to the end (or eternity?). He roams around in the white porcelain landscape in a black jacket and trousers. A little colour occasionally flares up, in the form of a film full of spring flowers. To contrast with this fragility, impotence and powerlessness, Barkey introduces the sensual force of three young dancers: Mélissa Guérin, Sarah Lutz and Mohamed Toukabri. The impression made by their frivolous, high-spirited dance is much less lasting than Seghers’ performance and is little more than a logical, light counterweight.