The composers on working on Medea:

Nicolai Worsaae

Peter Laugesen’ s texts for Medea surprised me from the first moment on by being so destructive and critical of society.

It was some of these texts on the outsider, which became my line of approach for writing more than the classical Medea tragedy.

For it is as if it only occurs momentarily in the texts. As if the story had been brushed away by the ocean or time itself, and now only the memory of Medea remains.

Working on the restoring of this Medea story has been quite interesting and to help myself, I have delved into the infancy of the classical opera, and found fragments of music, which I have been able to use as the fabric for my compositions. Noise is perhaps dominant in my parts, but if you are able to see it faintly in some of the parts with fragments of classical rudiments, they will without a doubt leave indelible traces on the inner ear.

Henrik Hellstenius

I think of Medea as a human being, who is deeply torn and who at any time has the destructive and self-destructive traits just below the surface. Her actions and the choices she makes are often extreme. Through Jason she gets an escape route away from the place she grew up and obtains a channel for her violent and passionate side. She holds powers, which Jason can use to his advantage and she has this passionate side, which gives an enormous kick to those, who are near her. But with her tremendous mental tensions it is doomed.

Laugesen’ s text is perhaps more poetic and mythical than psychological, and it creates an opening for musical experiments. Through it is possible to expound the actions of Jason and Medea indirectly. The text establishes the possibility of a polyphonic room for the violent story and Medea’s extreme actions. A room, where the music can participate in exploring sides of this story without directly narrating the concrete actions. 

Malin Bång

When you read the classical Medea story by Euripides, there is a clear and still relevant problem, which is illustrated by Medea’s actions: What happens when a large group of people are oppressed in a society? What happens, when the force to break loose is mobilised and the will to win freedom is immense? Will it be merciful in its rematch against the oppressing structures…?

Laugesen’ s texts on Medea’s escape indicate many different angles on her as a person and as a symbol, and I particularly enjoy the parts, which reflect on topic of freedom. What is freedom? Most people, who see this performance, are probably not having a serious problem with freedom in their everyday life. Simultaneously the presence or absence of freedom is present in all the small choices we make on a daily basis. In a democratic society artistic expression can be seen as a symbol of freedom. The artist is allowed to think and act critically from his own individual point of view. In my scenes Medea appears as a provoking performance artist, who challenges and puts herself above morality and ethics in her appearance, as she plays with other people’s life and welfare. Peter Laugesen writes:

”There are also advantages in being unfettered/there is another kind of freedom/which we only know in art or psychosis/or the unsafe state of anxiety, which lies as a trembling bridge/ between the two countries in the mind/and which most people don´t want to deal with.” 

Steingrimur Rohloff

For several thousand years the myth of Medea and its manifestation in Euripides and Ovid has survived.  The Medea myth has been retold again and again and has come represent one of the worst human actions imagined. A mother kills her own children. To me the myth on the one hand may be seen as a ”fictitious extreme” – in which there is a clash between inconceivable contrasts – a short circuit so to speak. But Medea is also in Jung’s depth psychology a primordial image, because if Medea had not given her name to the myth of child murder (a dimension, which Euripides adds in his work), there would probably be another mother in cultural history, which killed her own children. Medea thus represents an archetypical human presentation, a possibility in stories and alas also a conceivable reality. All these facets of human existence enter into the curious game, which is theatre – to experience other people’s fates

The motives for Medea’s actions are open for interpretation. It is revenge? Yes, but why? She is the ”dangerous stranger”, but also a ”sorceress”. She is ”fabulously beautiful”, but also ”uncivilized”. She is ”dangerous”, but ”attractive”. Which aspects do you stress in an artistic presentation?

The inviting thing for me as a composer reinterpreting the material is the area of conflict, which occurs between the well known and our own room of interpretation. As artists we of course try to get under the sin of Medea searching for her extremely divided emotions. But our music performance at the same time maintains a distance, which I personally like very much. I understand Peter Laugesen’s text, which takes its starting point in Ovid’s metamorphoses and in Lars Kaalund’s direction, as an expression, which maintains the ambivalent, incomprehensible and ambiguous fate of Medea. To give a definite answer would not be interesting. Laugesen and Kaalund stress the universal fabric of Medea’s fate – without presenting the drama as ”carved in granite”, but more by dividing it up in all its facets. For me a drama like Medea does not have ONE true perspective and thus ONE explanation. But more closely, as simple and clear the basic story is, as rich, ambiguous, ambivalent – and perhaps also relevant – it ideally becomes in its shaping.