Heretical Angels

ENSEMBLE DIALOGOS
KATARINA LIVLJANIĆ | direction, vocals, musical reconstruction
ALBRECHT MAURER | vielle, rebec
NORBERT RODENKIRCHEN | flutes

KANTADURI
JOŠKO ĆALETA | vocals and direction
NIKOLA DAMJANOVIĆ | vocals
SRECKO DAMJANOVIĆ | vocals
JURE MILOŠ | vocals, gusle, diple, dvojnice
MILIVOJ RILOV | vocals

On a medieval tombstone in Bosnia, it is written: “Kadhi hti biti, tgdi ne bih” – “When I wanted to exist, I couldn’t.” Katarina Livljanić read this inscription, and it made her realise how many people must have said exactly the same thing about themselves during the war in the 1990s.

This was the beginning of the “Heretical Angels” project. The voices of angels who adhere to no religion or ideology, good and fallen angels, light and dark angels, can be heard here.

The sources that inspired the work speak of the region’s unique cultural diversity. On a musical level, however, the manuscripts from the 12th to 15th centuries offer little more than hints. Therefore, the artists, the renowned Parisian ensemble Dialogos and the Croatian group Kantaduri, had to devise their own soundscape. Pure folk music from Dalmatian Zagora and western Herzegovina blends with the choral tradition of ancient theatre plays. Medieval styles from Central Europe fuse with new compositions: a fascinating, sometimes raw, but always profound mixture. The enlisted instruments also express the encounter between countries and eras: string instruments such as the vielle, rebec, and gusle, the diple bagpipe, and various flutes such as the dvojnice double flute.

“As we patiently pieced together this mosaic, the dominant themes slowly emerged: birth and death, visions of the creation of the world – and its end.” (K. Livljanić)

MUSICAL RECONSTRUCTION AND NEW COMPOSITION:
Katarina Livljanić and Joško Ćaleta

STAGE:
Sanda Herzic

LINGUISTIC ADVICE:
Marina Šimić
Marija Ana Dürrigl

DRAMATURGY AND TEXT ADAPTION:
Katarina Livljanić

AUSTRIAN PREMIERE

CONCERT INTRODUCTION
A conversation with Valentin Inzko, former Austrian Ambassador and High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina