Wiener Festwochen 2010: I Demoni - The Demons

Wiener Festwochen 2010: I Demoni - The Demons
Fjodor M. Dostojewski / Peter Stein

Date: 03 jun, 05 jun, 06 jun, 11:00
Venue: HALLE E+G / HALLE E

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Dramatic Marathon / San Pancrazio / Premiere in the German-speaking region
BY Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky
ITALIAN TRANSLATION Peter Stein

In May 2009, Peter Stein staged Dostoevsky\'s visionary novel The Demons as a breathtaking 12 hour theatre marathon in his Umbrian country house. Closely following the original, Stein sensitively retells an explosive generational conflict ending in catastrophe. More

Early last summer, Peter Stein invited selected spectators to a few performances of his version of Dostoyevsky\'s contemporary novel The Demons. The performance took place at the director\'s country-house in Umbria, precisely as the novel is mainly set in manor-houses of rural Russia. The spectators were personally welcomed and catered for by their host, the director. \"Something new was beginning, quite unlike the stagnation of the past ...\" With the ostensible neutrality of a chronicler, Dostoyevsky\'s novel describes the political and intellectual dynamics in the period of change preceding the Russian Revolution. The sedate liberalism of the fathers is kindled into fire by the radically anarchist sons, whose elitist solipsism also despises socialism. The core of the story is the (historical) murder of a student who had abandoned the ideas of this anarchist group. Dostoyevsky seizes on this event to attack both the radically anarchist \"demons\" or \"possessed\" (in the words of Albert Camus) and the cowardly liberals who - quite literally - begot them as twofold expressions of the political confusion troubling his country.

In his twelve-hour Italian-language stage version, Peter Stein retells the story of \"Demons\". With 25 performers he has created a production of bewitching simplicity.

copyright:
© Andrea Boccalini