I Went to the House but Did Not Enter

The title of this staged concert with the world-renowned vocal quartet The Hilliard Ensemble already suggests that not a lot happens. But just that is perhaps one of the secrets of Heiner Goebbels’ music theatre pieces, that they take place without any great spectacle and yet – or possible therefore? – exert a fascinating power. His latest work consists of three separate scenes, each one dedicated to a 20th century text: starting with T.S. Eliot’s well-known poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, continuing with Maurice Blanchot’s Madness of the Day and finishing with Worstward Ho! probably the most radical text by Samuel Beckett. As different as these texts are, they all have in common the fact that they endow a fragmented, anonymous first person narrator many voices and tones. Their language promises no security, their stories only reveal their often paradoxical meaning when completed by the listener. Maybe the evening is a journey, one which its antiheroic protagonists do not even begin. A journey in three spaces and three times which remain placeless – they are everywhere and nowhere