In Meudon, the Dialogos ensemble brings Hecuba back to life

Revived to the taste of a double Italian and Croatian Renaissance, the Queen of Troy, surrounded by a few selected partners, sings of hope and sacrifice, life and death, dreams and reality. Tragic and magnificent.

The set design by Sanda Hržić, a regular on the ensemble's projects, subtly enhances this rich abundant poetic-musical discourse.

The movements, sometimes off-stage, of the actors-singers and musicians and, those of the chorus (alternately close-knit or dispersed), the interplay of glances, and the discreet props, all underline the steps of the drama. The alternating of ancient dialects (Croatian and Italian), the transition from an ornate monody, whose rhythm matches that of the text, to a polyphony of simple note-on-note shifting, the declaimed-sung phrases accompanied by drones, the spoken voice, the harshly vocalised choir – all carve out a continuous and contrasting narrative.

(...) The musical reconstruction managed by the "Dialogos laboratory" hits the nail on the head. The ancient modality is willingly 'distorted' by insistent chromaticism, enhancing the discourse; flutes and strings creep into the vocal material, taking up a line, anticipating a motif, suggesting an imitation; a few dance themes slip here and there...

Katarina Livljanić brings this desperate, vengeful queen to life without ever falling into the trap of exaggerated acting. Her long, flexible, fine voice, dignified stage presence and delicate expressivity are all there, very simply and justly at the service of the music and the text.

Her enemies have beaten all her children to death, finally Polyxena and Polydor, who was murdered by a gold-hungry false friend. Now Troy's ex-queen Hecuba is taking revenge. Katarina Livljanić sings and acts with proudly refined dignity, but relentlessly. Hecuba's women kill the murderer's sons, blind him. And the five men of the Croatian vocal ensemble Kantaduri comment on this archaic female revenge with their harsh earthy sounds, which no one in the audience finds excessive.

The text was originally written by Athens' master playwright Euripides, it was translated into Latin, Italian, Dalmatian Croatian during the Renaissance. The grandiose Katarina Livljanić has enriched the texte with medieval-like melodic lines, Francisco Mañalich is her congenial partner, taking on several women's and men's roles. This is how one wants and can imagine Greek tragedy performed.

Hecube, feminist and pacifist, is at home in the present day

Simple means are used by the Ensemble Dialogos in their version of Euripides' Hecuba, a work of spine-chilling beauty.

Croatian musicologist and singer Katarina Livljanić incarnates the Trojan queen Hecuba using just minimal dignified gestures, an ornate and distinguished black dress and, moreover, restrained but penetrating singing and textual declamation.

Katarina Livljanić gives Hecuba's lament over the fall of Troy a great amplitude, so that even the 'bureaucrat' Ulysses is touched. Mañalich poignantly plays Polyxena's path to death, interpreting as well the roles of the suffering ghost of murdered Polydorus who wants to see his mother one last time, and that of Polydorus's murderer, Polymnestor, when his sons are killed.

The music performed by Kantaduri is based on folk traditions that have survived in Croatia. While Baroque opera in Italy was hoping to revive Greek drama, these Croatian traditions are perhaps even closer to the ancient traditions of the southern Balkans.

Such a reconstruction can become academic or sentimental, but in Dialogos everything is convincing. Perhaps that's because the performers all know exactly what they're doing, with a kind of Brechtian half-embarrassment, half-alienation that clearly brings out the text itself and the characters, combined with the mix of two languages and two musical styles.

Moreover, Dialogos does not intend to reconstruct per se. In an essay distributed with the show, In search of 'not really' lost time, Katarina Livljanić explains how important it is to experience the surviving past traditions today, since they can be even more eloquent about universal principles than our attempts at purely historical reconstructions.

I was impressed by the show I had seen before, Euripides' Hecuba by a Croatian ensemble. One of the finest productions of this year's festival and one of the finest theatrical performances this year.

A singer (Katarina Livljanić, co-curator of the festival) in the role of Hecuba, Francisco Mañalich, in the role of Hecuba's son and daughter, as well as the son's murderer. Two instrumentalists playing traditional Croatian and modern instruments. A quintet of traditional Croatian singers, Kantaduri, performs the Greek chorus. And alongside the Croatian polyphony, the music of Claudio Merulo, one of Monteverdi's Venetian precursors. A bare stage, and a very moving show.

...A brilliant and magical show, not just a window into the past, but above all a vision of the mystery of the human soul that speaks to us, people of today.

Sanda Hržić is undoubtedly the director who made the most creative use of the space, enhanced by her direction and the lighting design of Srećko Damjanović.

Chilean tenor Francisco Mañalich... transformed himself harmoniously from one role to another, his velvety timbre was the gem of the evening.

The biggest role was performed by Katarina Livljanić's Hecuba, who interpreted the wide emotional range of heroine's psychological states with sovereign skill, captivating the audience with her perfect intonation and diction.

Based on an impressive number of sources and specialist research, this project has produced such a beautiful and captivating result, with every detail designed to enchant us completely, taking us on a journey, leaving the space and time in which we live, and leading us to the bone marrow of Hecuba's story.

Singer, musicologist and actress Katarina Livljanić has created a programme that one watches, listens to and follows with suspended breath... The ancient drama of Hecuba is not an unpredictable story, but the way in which music and text are united in this project is. The dramaturgical result is brilliant...

Katarina Livljanić's magnificent voice seduces us again and again, not only with its brilliant colour and intonation, but also with the clarity of her diction and her interpretation, focused on the range of Hecuba's emotions in every moment of the performance. The emotional power of her performance shows how deeply she has penetrated the character she is playing.

A very important soloist in this project is tenor Francisco Mañalich, who also plays the viol. With a warm, stylistically perfect voice, he interpreted all his roles. It was particularly impressive to hear Katarina Livljanić and Francisco Mañalich, accompanied or a cappella, singing polyphonic pieces as a duo.

Faithful Dialogos musicians Norbert Rodenkirchen (flute, dvojnice) and Albrecht Maurer (fiddle, lijerica) accompanied the singers, not hesitating to explore more contemporary playing techniques at times, to emphasise Hecuba's emotions as if in a film.

Kantaduri, led by Joško Ćaleta, gave an impressive performance of traditional melodies, playing the role of the choir in ancient tragedies.

Katarina Livljanić and Dialogos offered the audience a performance of the highest standard, which we don't often have the occasion to see, either on the main stage of the Croatian National Theatre or elsewhere. The intimate space of their performance allowed the audience to enter the inner world of Queen Hecuba, brilliantly interpreted by the creator of this project.

Magnificent and terrifying, two-headed Hecuba in St Donatus

Dialogos is an ensemble, but a true laboratory as well… not interested in early music as a reconstruction of fossils' bones, but as a basis for authentic new creations, alive, exciting, and deeply connected to us today.

Francisco Mañalich, a magnificent Chilean tenor and artist, sang powerfully accompanying himself on the renaissance viola, giving voice both to the unfortunate Hecuba's children and their assassins.

Kantaduri, led by Joško Ćaleta, were powerful as thunders, in soothing songs and rough traditional dissonant styles... They incarnated the antique choir and impressive side roles as well: Ante Podrug as Ulysses, Milivoj Rilov as Agamemnon, Srećko Damjanović as the servant.

Katarina Livljanić's faithful partners… instrumentalists Albrecht Maurer and Norbert Rodenkirchen, playing dvojnice, a couple of flutes, a lijerica and a few strings… They were able to create windy and terrifying storms on the sea and in our souls.

And finally, in the center, in the whirlpool of war, greed, murder and revenge - the magnificent and terrifying Hecuba incarnated by Katarina Livljanić.

"The soil is hard, and heaven is high." – I remembered this verse, as a symbol of this new masterpiece by the fearless and creative laboratory Dialogos, led by Katarina Livljanić.

Katarina Livljanić's interview in Croatian on the world premiere of Hecuba in the magazine Nacional (PDF).

Katarina Livljanić's interview in Croatian on our project Hecuba on the website Glazba.hr (PDF).

Katarina Livljanić's interview in Croatian on the creation of our project Hecuba in the daily newspaper Večernji list (PDF).