Access the menu

OPUS

Cie CIRCA - Yaron Lifschitz and Quatuor Debussy

Creation 2013 - Re-creation 2016

Piece for 7 circus musicians and 4 musicians

Show
1h15
CHOSTAKOVITCH String quartets2015, String quartets | Elégie

avec Compagnie C!rca - Yaron Lifschitz, Quatuor Debussy

— CHOSTAKOVITCH Dimitri
Quartet n°5 opus 92 in B flat minor (1952)
Quartet n°8 opus 110 in C minor (1960)
Quartet n°11 opus 122 in F major (1966)
Elegy and polka for quartet (1931)

Opus is a work of stunning power, virtuosity and poetry. Fourteen acrobats and a string quartet celebrate the music of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Shostakovich’s quartets are by turns intimate, passionate, lyrical, ironic and deeply moving personal testimonies by one of the 20th Century’s greatest composers. In Opus, three of his quartets form the musical and dramatic spine of a red-hot fusion of extreme acrobatics, lyrical movement and group choreography.

 

Opus begins from a solo performer suspended on a rope serenaded by musicians, then moves through rapidly alternating scenes of dislocated stillness and violent explosions into geometries of acrobats intersected by extreme physicality to arrive at exquisitely detailed and nuanced choreographies of acrobats flying, balancing and landing.

 

Opus explores the complex relationships between the individual and the group, between the march of history and the dictates of the heart and between the tragic and the comic. This is groundbreaking work of intense power. A melding of music and bodies at the highest level.

« The combination of risk and physical wizardry seemed a perfect match for the music. As for the Debussy Quartet, their feat can hardly be overstated. To play three quartets – the others were No 5 and No 11 – almost entirely from memory to such a level of intelligence and musicality would already be beyond most players. To do so while walking around barefoot, sometimes blindfolded, with 14 bodies jumping and leaping dangerously just inches away, renders one speechless. The joint trust between all, acrobats and musicians alike, was extraordinarily moving. Shostakovich would have thrilled to every second. »
The Guardian

« Opus is cut-glass, caviar circus. It’s black tie and ballgown circus. And it’s an astonishing thing to watch: graceful, bombastic. Profound. »
The Telegraph

« It is a complex relationship, spatially and dynamically. The musicians walk in and around the action and at times sit blindfolded, sharing the danger and excitement of the frenetic tumbling frothing around them while continuing to play undisturbed (…) But it is Lifschitz’s ability to produce an aesthetic experience from the accumulation of all the components of the show that speaks the loudest. It’sbreathtaking, it is beautiful, it is epic. Not even a trick gone wrong blows the power of the show. An astounding experience. »
The Australian

Program dates

Past dates

View all past dates
Back to the list of programs

Follow us!

Sign up for the french newsletter

Follow the Debussy Quartet
Discover our latest
newsletter (in french)