Medea

“We attended two performances of Benda's Medea with the greatest of pleasure. Nothing has ever impressed me more! The combining of prose and music is most pleasing. Benda is one of my favourite composers.”
This is what the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote to his father upon witnessing a performance of Medea in Mannheim. In the 18th century, the term “melodrama” was used to denote a form sufficiently avant-garde by the standards of the day to have made an impression on the young Wolfgang's genius: a theatrical work with a musical accompaniment, but with recitations in place of singing.

When Anna Schudt, one ot Germany's most versatile singers becomes the voice of Medea in Göttingen, audiences can look forward to witnessing the almost schizophrenic monologue of this character on stage.

“Here I lie and implore vengeance on Jason's head!” cries Medea, the forsaken. Jason, father of her children, whom she once loved so passionately, who only rose to power and dominion through her strength, has cast her aside for another woman. Yet Medea hates as passionately as she loves. Her revenge not only leads to the death of the royal couple Jason and Kreusa, but also turns her into the murderer of her own children.
How can a loving mother commit such atrocities? What battles rage within Medea? For millennia, questions such as these have rendered the ancient tragedy based on Euripides a popular theatrical subject.

The program also features George Frideric Handel's overture to the opera Teseo, as well as works by two of the most eminent living Greek composers. Giorgos Kouroupos and Giorgos Koumendakis undertook the challenge of composing music for baroque instruments. Inspired by the exotic colours of the instruments of the past, they create works that bring the past and the present together.