It all begins with a collapse: that of a house, and that of music. On stage, the space unravels as the stories follow each other, echoing the despondency felt by the characters, in keeping with the seemingly perfect music. For the protagonists, those endings will be attempts at new beginnings, starting points for the construction of new fictions. The creators of musical shows in which humour vies with depth, Samuel Achache and his actor-musicians delve even deeper than usual with Drumless. Robert Schumann’s Lieder, emblematic of German Romanticism, inspire a fragmented dramaturgy, composed collectively. Those finite yet unfinished forms immerge us into hyper-subjective, fleeting, but deep images. How can we rebuild musically after a disaster?
German composer and pianist Robert Schumann (1810-1856) was one of the greatest artists of the Romantic era. He was also, along with Schubert and Brahms, a master of the Lied—short pieces for voice and piano—with his Liederkreis widely seen as the pinnacle of the genre. A literary composer par excellence, he put to music the poetry of the German Romantics, including Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Rückert, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.