


I don’t belong anywhere, not even in this ghost world. I couldn’t make myself disappear. My land is calling me. I can still hear it.
Du Yun
From now on, the Lucerne Theater will portray a female composer every season. The composer, multi-instrumentalist and performance artist Du Yun will be a guest in the first season. Du Yun is a wanderer between worlds: born in China, she now lives in New York, but travels around the world for her projects (“FutureTradition”, “Where We Lost Our Shadows”).
In her two music theater works, which will be heard for the first time in Switzerland, she deals with questions of belonging and being lost between worlds: In the entertaining chamber opera “A Cockroach’s Tarantella”, a cockroach describes the hardships of her life – and has something to say. In “Zolle” a spirit speaks to us who wants to return to earth. A longing that Du Yun interprets primarily musically: her surprising tonal language, which she expands with the tonal possibilities of electronics in many ways, also pervades a faint memory of Italian opera. This play with the musical present and the past is combined in Du Yun’s compositions to form an intense moment in the now, at the center of which we listeners stand.
For the director of the double evening, Roscha A. Säidow, who is always looking for room installations for the sound in her productions, Du Yun’s works are acoustic escapes into a paradisiacal state.
A Cockroach’s Tarantella / Zolle will be performed on select dates from
October 27 – November 13, 2021.
Creative Team
Composer & Libretto | Du Yun |
Director | Roscha A. Säidow |
Stage and Costumes | Roscha A. Säidow |
Musical Director | Alexander Sinan Binder |
Light | Clemens Gorzella |
Dramaturgy | Johanna Mangold |
Cast
Du Yun (narrator), Misaki Morino (soprano), Anna Bineta Diouf (mezzo-soprano), Moritz Profitlich (extra), Lou Orell Bolinger (extra), Ziad Nehme (recording of Zolle), Lucerne Symphony Orchestra