Ismène

Ismène is a work George Aperghis, based on a poem of the same name by Yannis Ritsos. An opera for solo voice, an inner dialogue, performance for a body and the natural elements. It is and invitation to see and to hear, to penetrate a visual installation interwoven with a stripped-down vocal work, in a movement combining openness and absolute concentration. Ismene, in her solitude, cultivates a sensory contact with her childhood memories. This movement, from a woman at the end of her life, carrying the baggage of her experiences, of violence, is transmuted into a long meditation, both perceptive and lyrical. This makes of Ismene a unique character, both endearing and yet universal.Two years after Pierre Bartholomee’s La Lumiere d’Antigone, Ismène takes us, once again, to Thebes and invites us to revisit the tragic world of Oedipus and his children.