Requiem pour L.

The Requiem was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s last composition. When he died at an age of only 35 in 1791, the work was incomplete; it was finished by Franz Xaver Süßmayr, one of his students, and premiered in Vienna in 1793. This musical legacy is the point of departure for a contemporary funeral mass. Alain Platel and the composer Fabrizio Cassol created, together with musicians from Congo, South Africa, Brazil and Europe, an intercontinental dialogue and an unusual approach to this musical heritage.

Like an observer of her own farewell ritual, a woman with the abbreviated name L. –the “L” in the title of the work refers to her – looks down onto the stage from a screen. In the last moments before her death, sleeping states and being awake appear in slow motion. The piece shows a strangely fascinating symbiosis of an ecstatic concert and documentary funeral ceremony.

Alain Platel, born in 1956, has been residing in the Flemish Ghent up until the present day; he is one of the most important choreographers of our times. In 1984, he founded the company les ballets C de la B in his home city; it has – without a doubt – belonged to the most successful dance and theatre groups in the world for years now. Alain Platel will be a guest of the euro-scene Leipzig for the 9th time since 1996, where he recently showed “En avant, marche!” (“Forward, march!”, 2015).