François Sarhan: La philosophie dans le boudoir

music theatre

(2015/2016)

music, stage design, concept, text compilation, animated films: François Sarhan

costumes: Katharina Müller

light: Mathieu Arnal und Ingo Jooß

performance in the animated films and masks: Janina Akhmetova

translations and setting up libretti: Titus Selge

playback surtitles: Marc Reichow

video: Matthias Schneider-Hollek

project manager: Jakob Berger

Neue Vocalsolisten

Johanna Zimmer, soprano: Ulrike Meinhof, Mme de Mistival, Mme M.
Susanne Leitz-Lorey, soprano: Klaus Croissant, Eugénie, CEO
Truike van der Poel, mezzo-soprano: prosecutor, Mme de St. Ange, CEO
Martin Nagy, tenor: prosecutor, Le Chevalier, Patrick le Lay
Guillermo Anzorena, baritone: Prinzing, Dolmancé, Alexandre de Juniac
Andreas Fischer, bass: Buback, Dolmancé, Charles Koch

A production by Musik der Jahrhunderte.

World premiere on 5 February 2016 at ECLAT Festival Neue Musik at Theaterhaus Stuttgart.

The central theme of the music theatre is oppression. Pressure exerted by a group on an individual. More specifically: on a woman by a group of men. This overarching theme is developed in three different contexts: the world of global players, the RAF trial against Ulrike Meinhof, and de Sade’s »Philosophy in the Bedroom.« For each of these contexts, a narrative in the form of a libretto is developed.

François Sarhan
© Claudia Klein

François Sarhan (*1972) studied composition in Paris. The French composer, author, visual artist, and filmmaker is also the director of his own music theatre works as well as multimedia pieces, in which he often performs himself. He worked with South African artist William Kentridge on Telegrams from the Nose, which has been shown over 30 times at major festivals and events across Europe.

Sarhan has taught at IRCAM Paris and Marc-Bloch University in Strasbourg. Exhibitions of his visual works (videos, collages, and art books) have been presented in Johannesburg, Paris, Prague, and Ghent, among others. He is interested in the interpretation and dissemination of knowledge, for example, in his book series Encyclopaedia, in which he parodies the knowledge of universities.

He works with found objects (public documents, spoken voice, collages) in an approach that combines collage, improvisation, automatic writing, and criticism in a theoretical or communicative manner.

Since 2024, he has been teaching at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz. François Sarhan lives in Berlin.