Angélica Liddell

Liebestod

Archive 2022

Theatre

1/2

2h

Text, staging, stage design, and costumes, Angélica Liddell
Featuring Ezekiel Chibo, Patrice Le Rouzic, Angélica Liddell, Borja López, Gumersindo Puche, Palestina de los Reyes, and extras
Lights, Mark Van Denesse
Sound, Antonio Navarro
Costumes, Justo Algaba
Staging assistant, Borja López
Set technicians, Nicolas Guy, Michel Chevallier
Production director, Gumersindo Puche

Produced by Atra Bilis Teatro; NTGent
Co-produced by Festival d’Avignon; TANDEM Scène nationale (Douai-Arras); Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt)
Co-directed by Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe (Paris); Festival d’Automne à Paris

The actual title of the play, Liebestod. The smell of blood does not leave my eyes. Juan Belmonte sets the scene for a three-part exploration of love, death and art. Angélica Liddell’s show goes much further than simply paying homage to the bullfighter of Triana, she delivers a true profession of theatrical faith.

Liebestod : love death. In Wagner’s opera, the term denotes the death that consumates the love of Tristan and Ysolde, within and beyond their bramble-infested graves. This death is also that of Juan Belmonte, the “celestial matador”, the summit of the spiritual bullfighter. ”You bullfight as you are”, as Belmonte said. “You bullfight as you love“ affirms Angélica Liddell. Preferring, by far, beauty to sense of duty, spirituality to responsibilities, and the arena to society, she concocts for the stage a liturgy in which the mysterious and the sacred reigns supreme. A liturgy that unfurls in the shadow of the black veil, the forerunner of the Wagnerian tragedy. By evoking Cioran, she erects her theatre on the heights of despair. “The only thing you need to have in bullfighting is a death-wish”. To want to die is, perhaps, the only thing you need in order to take to the stage.