Hans Op de Beeck

In times of religious violence, the young mother Vigdis Adelaïs is torn between her Christian upbringing and the Jewish faith, to which she has converted for her beloved. The Belgian composer Wim Henderickx and librettist Krystian Lada have created a new opera from Stefan Hertmans' haunting novel about identity, impossible love, faith and human strength. Western early music, modernism and film music merge with Jewish and Arab traditions to create a contemporary opera in which Vigdis' epic story is told through sound. Koen Kessels tackles the challenge of conducting not only the Orchestra, Chorus and Children’s Chorus of Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, but also a cast with singers from different vocal traditions, instrumentalists who play the qanûn, duduk or oud, and a newly formed city choir made up of Antwerp citizens from diverse backgrounds.

In “The Girl,” art historical traditions of the panorama, landscape painting, and German-Romantic notions of melancholy and the sublime converge with the technological advances of cinema to create a powerful work that both unsettles and inspires.

A quiet story on a big boat.

‘Staging Silence (3)’ is the third and final installment in a series of autonomous art films, all realised according to the same principles. In the three films, two pairs of anonymous hands construct and deconstruct fictional interiors and landscapes on a mini film set of just three square meters in size.