Music theatre between devotion and desire. On the occasion of the 350th anniversary of Heinrich Schütz’s death, Nico and the Navigators dedicate themselves to the work of the early baroque composer.
“Beware that your hearts are not weighed down with eating and drinking …”
On the occasion of the 350th anniversary of Heinrich Schütz’s death, Nico and the Navigators dedicate themselves to the work of the early Baroque composer, who received his musical training in Kassel before studying the Italian style in Venice. For decades he shaped musical life in Dresden as court kapellmeister before retiring to Weißenfels. With his madrigals and motets, his Symphoniae Sacrae and passions, he had already achieved European significance.
The scenic project “Flesh and Spirit” inquires into the inner and outer coordinates of his art, into heavenly faith and earthly desire, and into the contemporary resonance of such an attitude. At the end of the Gutenberg galaxy, the cosmos of books from whose words Schütz and his contemporaries drew their sacred and secular works is once again surveyed.
The historically informed performance practice does not serve as an unshakable pedestal of a monument, but as a vibrating platform for the revival of the artist in his and our sound worlds, which meet at eye level in different forms of play – music, dance, song, language.
“Be ye therefore always valiant, and pray that ye may be worthy …”
photo: DIETER HARTWIG
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Matthias Lutze
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Ekaterina Bazhanova
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Daniel Seminara
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Alon Portal
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Anna Fusek
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Elfa Run Kristinsdottir
Elfa Run Kristinsdottir
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Yui Kawaguchi
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Matthias Lutze
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Ekaterina Bazhanova
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Daniela Vega
“Fleisch und Geist” is at once cheeky and profound, amusing yet often tinged with sadness – an inquiry not only into the composer himself but also into his era and our own. Schütz, with a particular focus on his Song of Songs settings, alongside Claudio Monteverdi & Co., are brought together here in a surreal, boundless, astonishingly imaginative and at times unsettling collage (concept and direction: Nicola Hümpel, stage design: Oliver Proske).
The Berlin company Nico and the Navigators, currently touring with this production (twice more this coming Friday and Saturday at the Kasseler Musiktage), approaches the material with gripping immediacy. Early Baroque original sound suddenly spills over into breakdance, modern beats underpin madrigals and passacaglias, while a wall of massive folios is playfully devoured, scattered and ultimately dismantled in the course of the bustling action: a play of sonic and visual metaphors and allegories, unfolding as a performative Gesamtkunstwerk – virtuosic without striving for perfection, open to improvisation, and filled with a vitality that, echoing the musical figure at its center during these early November days, is able to integrate both grief and disquiet.
The plan to probe things together and to enchant the audience has once again succeeded – carried, as always, by supreme mastery and unconditional dedication. This co-production […] has become a tribute to Schütz that is both dignified and light-hearted: virtuosic in music, dance, acting and singing, captivating through wit, humour and relish.
Yes, it is also about alternatives. About the question of how, in the pious yet pleasure-seeking Baroque era, one could have credibly advocated pure asceticism? And perhaps also about the fact that Protestant Christians, to this day, find it more difficult than Catholics to reconcile the joy of enjoyment with the joy of faith.
For the 350th anniversary of the death of the central German composer Heinrich Schütz, who has always lived somewhat in the shadow of Bach and Handel, the troupe Nico and the Navigators – founded more than 20 years ago at the Bauhaus Dessau and now based in Berlin – has staged a new music theatre work.
This co-production of the Navigators with the Heinrich Schütz Music Festival, the Kasseler Musiktage, the Staatstheater Kassel and Theater Altenburg Gera has become a tribute to Schütz that is both dignified and cheerful: virtuosic in music, dance, performance and song, fascinating through acuity, humour and sensual delight – just as one has come to expect from the troupe around director Nicola Hümpel and stage designer Oliver Proske. Musical direction is by Elfa Rún Kristinsdóttir (baroque violin), dramaturgy by author Andreas Hillger.
The plan to delve into things together and to enchant the audience has once again succeeded, carried, as always, by great mastery and unconditional commitment. This includes all participants, who are not only musicians and singers, but also stagehands who move and animate the fantastic set created by Oliver Proske.
Nor is the 90-minute production Fleisch & Geist short on surprises: Baroque sonorities suddenly slide askew, delicate ruffs turn into frivolous skirts. Much is read, but much is also desired. And pious books may fly through the air. The carnal and the intellectual belong together, without question – not only here.
[…] exuberant like a Baroque firework, yet always close to the abyss.
The contradictions are tangible: in the multifaceted music of Schütz, but also in the contrast between the sung words and the mimed or danced expression. Dance seduces while God is being praised. At times macabre, frightening, then suddenly hilarious. And again and again, musical excursions that break away from the expected.
A woman sits at the front edge of the stage, speaking more than singing. Her tangled blonde hair hides her face. A sombre mood dominates: muted colours – violet, mustard yellow, brown, dusty rose. A hovering into other times – war, plague – and yet still the yearning for spiritual depth. Hence books, everywhere books, filling the shelves along the back wall of the stage. In contrast, the irrepressible desire for immediate life.
Nicola Hümpel, director and head of Nico and the Navigators, interweaves in Fleisch & Geist the music of Heinrich Schütz and some of his contemporaries with present-day sounds, with dance and with sheer physical action. Exuberant like a Baroque firework, but always close to the abyss…
The contradictions are palpable: in the richly varied music of Schütz, but also in the contrast between the sung words and the mimed or danced expression. Dance seduces while God is being praised. At times macabre, unsettling, then suddenly uproarious. And again and again, musical departures that surprise…
The works of Nico and the Navigators are collective creative processes with ever-changing teams. Nicola Hümpel has been collaborating with dancer Yui Kawaguchi for many years. The male dancers have also appeared repeatedly, as have the two mezzo-sopranos and the bass-baritone. The musicians led by violinist Elfa Rún Kristinsdóttir, however, are new to the ensemble…
For ten weeks they worked intensively. In parallel, the complex stage set took shape – with elements that can transform into a staircase leading to an altar, or carry the singer or flautist rolling across the stage. Symbolic props such as medieval ruffs are coquettishly used as fans or as tutus. In one scene, even oversized book spines transform into such a ruff, then into the wings of an eagle…
And then the books – so many books – ultimately torn, shredded, rendered useless, a sign of absolute end-time atmosphere: Apocalypse Now.
“Fleisch & Geist” by Nico and the Navigators is a panorama of human brilliance and, at the same time, of human abysses. […] With tremendous expressive power and physical commitment, at times bordering on acrobatics, the performers demonstrated where it leads when flesh gains the upper hand over spirit […] a subject of striking contemporary relevance.
Newly discovered through a different lens, the music of Heinrich Schütz has been embraced by Nicola Hümpel, director and artistic head of the collective Nico and the Navigators. "Fleisch & Geist" is the scenic production she premiered at the Schütz Music Festival. “I admit I initially had my reservations, but they have now disappeared. I have come to appreciate and even to love much of Schütz’s music – largely because we approached it with such freedom.”
"Fleisch & Geist" by Nico and the Navigators is a panorama of human brilliance and, at the same time, of human abysses. …
The cast also included two female singers, one male singer, a female dancer and two male dancers. With enormous expressive power and physical commitment, at times bordering on acrobatics, they demonstrated what happens when flesh gains the upper hand over spirit – for director Nicola Hümpel a subject of burning relevance: “The bitter realisation is that thousands of years of evolution and cultural history can ultimately be overthrown by the will of a single person – the result may be an atomic bomb. In the end, all the knowledge we have acquired over millennia, all the culture we have created, is at stake. I don’t think any artist can step onto the stage at the moment without carrying the weight of current events.”
In the end, the stage becomes a battlefield. Books lie shredded everywhere, the protagonists are half-dead or entirely lifeless. Flesh has triumphed over spirit, over human culture. The audience is left bewildered. A way out? Perhaps in turning back to Heinrich Schütz, who, in the dark times of the Thirty Years’ War, was hailed as the Lumen Germaniae – the “Light of Germany.”
A co-production of Nico and the Navigators, Heinrich-Schütz-Musikfest | SCHÜTZ22, Kasseler Musiktage, Staatstheater Kassel and Theater Altenburg Gera.
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