Listings

La Voix Humaine - Beijing Music Festival

Date: Oct 21 - 7:30 pm

Venue: The Red

Price: 180 yuan

Belgium's premier new opera company Muziektheater Transparant is invited by the Beijing Music Festival to bring "La Voix Humaine" in a concept of director Wouter Van Looy, soprano Naomi Beeldens and pianist Joroen Malaise. This one-act opera for soprano and orchestra is composed by Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) on the basis of a written work by Jean Cocteau (1889-1963). In a desperate telephone conversation, a woman makes a final attempt to get back her lover. She creates a web of words - fearful, yearning, hysterical - as a safety net in her struggle for survival in the face of the imminent void. The gradual realization that her lover has chosen once and for all to be with someone else drives her to despair, until the connection is literally broken. In the staging by the soprano Naomi Beeldens and director Wouter Van Looy, the stage is a mind map in which props and chalk lines are the only tangible remains of a lost relationship. The woman, in an obscure, film-like space, seems to be staging her own death and obsessively keeping her love alive in endless repetition. In the background, a dancer gives shape to the absent lover, while the pianist and composer Jeroen Malaise brings Francis Poulenc's score impressively to life.

Contact: 010-6593-0250

Teatr Semianyki of Russia Semianyki: The Family

Date: Oct 21-22 - 7:30 pm

Venue: Beijing Comedy Theater

Price: 60-320 yuan

Think of the Addams Family meeting Modern Family, Semianyki: The Family traces the joys, the craziness, and the survival strategies of a family trapped in its own version of "home sweet home". Love and chaos paradoxically intertwine the relationships between the pregnant yet flirtatious mother, the caring yet alcoholic father who alternates on the verge of breaking down or leaving, and their four tender yet unruly kids pushing each other and their parents to the limit. Their zany and comedic domestic power struggle extends into the audience and culminates in an emotional uniting of the family complete with a spectacular paper-flinging finale.

Contact: 010-6655-0000