La Nuit transfigurée | GOECKE

Love is the night. The theatre is the night.

For his work "The Transfigured Night" Arnold Schönberg was inspired by Richard Dehmel's poem Zwei Menschen aus Weib und Welt (1896). The poem addresses taboo subjects at the time, such as pregnancy out of wedlock and social morality. Dehmel's expressionist poetry forced Schönberg to look for new means of harmonic expression that went beyond the influences of Brahms and Wagner. This research culminated in the chromatic density and the "floating" sound image of Verklärte Nacht, which already refers to Schönberg’s later atonality.

Schönberg transformed the text into a universal representation of human empathy and attachment to nature. Music not only evokes action - for example, steps in the moonlight or emotional tension - but exalts it in a metaphysical experience, as Schönberg himself emphasised.

Goecke's choreography, on the other hand, has nothing to do with Dehmel's poem, even if love is the main theme of this piece: past love, lost love, unhappy love and loneliness. Goecke describes the aspirational force of Schönberg's music in an unusual way: "For me this music produces the same drunkenness as I knew in the 1990s in a techno club in Berlin. Youth is present, heart to heart, we spent nights too beautiful to sleep".

Big dreams, deep darkness, can we cut the night and the sky? In love, the clown tries. A female dancer and a male dancer find themselves in a fast and energetic pas de deux, but everything ends with two blows and, scolded and broken, he remains alone. Another dancer shows loneliness, vulnerability and sadness in a poignant solo. He remains outside in a large group, even if they all say the same thing: "Love is like an animal, which is fed throughout the night; when the day comes, love dies. " The night is transfigured, not the day. It is transfigured because we are ourselves in love and transfigured. The day brings reality.

At the end, there is "I am leaving you". After that, there is only one hope left: the moon.

Nadja Kadel

LA NUIT TRANSFIGURÉE | MARCO GOECKE
Choreography: Marco Goecke
Assistant Choreographer: Giovanni Di Palma
Music: Arnold Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht" for string orchestra op. 4 
Dramaturge: Nadja Kadel 
Light Designer: Udo Haberland
Set and costume Designer: Michaela Springer
Duration: 30 min

Creation for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo. Premiere held on April 23rd 2025, Grimaldi Forum Monaco.
With the participation of the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jesko Sirvend, pianist: David Bismuth