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Press Reviews
„Béatrice Lachaussées stage direction of „Jakob Lenz“ in the Trinity church is the highlight of the opera season.”
“As regarding the place, its adequacy as a performing space is now well established – providing that someone knows how to handle it with fantasy and in depth as Béatrice Lachaussée and her stage designer Nele Ellegiers have done.“
“Lachaussée makes the link between the church as a spiritual place and as a secular subject as the representation of an artist and creative drama between genius and madness with meaning and without strain.”
"And similarly as the character direction always continually intensifies into new sensual, vivid and powerful tableaus."
KÖLNER STADT ANZEIGER, Markus Schwering, 24.03.2014
“How one gets to the core of a piece by giving up superficial opulence was well demonstrated this weekend at the Cologne Opera in a new production of Wolfgang Rihm’s chamber opera “Jakob Lenz” at the Trinity Church. The young stage director Béatrice Lachaussée used the unusual performance space in an ideal way, by transforming the whole church nave into a stage. A narrow path divides the facing audience rows and leads literally like a fatal ridge from the desk to the altar, from the bed to the pulpit and finally, at the very end of the church, up to the grief cliff, from where the poet who has gone mad will fall into the abyss.”
FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG, Christian Wildhagen, 01.04.2014
Videos
Casting
20th of January 1778. The poet Jakob Lenz wanders in the Vosges, victim of paranoid hallucinations. He arrives in the village of Waldbach. Stroken by a schizophrenia crise, he jumps into a well. Pastor Oberlin discovers him and offers him his hospitality, hoping his guest will soon recover.
B.L
Opera of Cologne
Place Trinity Church, Filzengraben 6, 50676 Köln
Premiere 22. March 2014, 8:00 pm
Performances on 28. & 30. March 2014 and 6., 9. & 13. April 2014
Conductor Alejo Perez
Director Béatrice Lachaussée
Stage and Costume Designer Nele Ellegiers
Light Designer Andreas Grüter
Dramaturg Georg Kehren
Lenz Miljenko Turk
Oberlin Wolf Matthias Friedrich
Kaufmann John Heuzenroeder
Voices Erika Simons, Marcelo de Souza Felix, Marta Wryk,
Aoife Miskelly, Luke Stoker
Gürzenich-Orchester Köln