Past WORK

FIGURE and Alkanna Graeca present MOURN, a musical-theatrical exploration of the experience of loss through the rituals of the Balkans and the music of 17th-century Italy. The performance examines the universal experience of losing a loved one, and the ways we come to terms with death. Through music and song, unfolding in a series of poetic scenes inspired by ancient funeral traditions kept alive in the Balkans and reimagined in Italy, MOURN asks how we say farewell to those we love most. 

In Renaissance Italy, composers drew on Ancient Greek tragedy to invent a new declamatory style that sits between speech and song. The funeral laments that were woven into those dramas became central to early opera, and the style spread across Europe. The “lament bass” - a repeating, descending four-note line - was used in Germany by Biber, in France by Lully and, nearly 1000 miles away, in England by Purcell in Dido’s Lament. Had those Italian composers crossed the Adriatic Sea to the Balkans, they would have found the mourning traditions which were immortalised in Ancient Greek tragedy still in practice, forming an unbroken lineage with the past. There the funeral lament, sung rather than spoken, endured as part of everyday life - delivered outward and upward to a community of the living, the dead, and the divine.

Historically informed performance ensemble FIGURE has been praised in The Times for its “high-risk, high-reward” projects, and in The Guardian as musically “unequivocally impressive, its sound invigorating, its commitment absolute”. Alkanna Graeca is a vocal trio blending raw folk traditions from the Balkans, Mediterranean, and Black Sea with free improvisation, whose “spine-tingling harmonies and dissonances have reinvented ancient polyphony for a contemporary audience”. MOURN places the imagined tradition of Western Europe and the living tradition of the Balkans in dialogue, reconstructing a ritual of grief.

MOURN features traditional polyphonies from across the Balkans, including Albania, Epirus, and Thrace, as well as music composed by Claudio Monteverdi, Barbara Strozzi, and Carlo Gesualdo. The original concept was devised by Alexandra Achillea and Frederick Waxman.

Vocalists

Alexandra Achillea

Irini Arabatzi

Dunja Botic

Violin

Naomi Burrell

James Toll

Lute

Sergio Bucheli

Double Bass

Jan Zahourek

Kanun

Konstantinos Glynos

Chamber Organ

Frederick Waxman



Stage Director

Alexandra Achillea

Assistant Director (Movement and Dramaturgy)

Konstantina-Maria Spyropoulou

Music Director & Creative Producer

Frederick Waxman

Photo Credit: "Nyx (the night)," 2019. Photographer: Ioanna Sakellaraki

Antonio Vivaldi Concerto for Strings in D minor RV 129 “Madrigalesco"

Caroline Shaw Punctum

Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer Concerto Armonico no. 4 in G major

Freya Waley-Cohen Talisman

Joanna Ward A Sweet Romance

Arcangelo Corelli Concerto Grosso in C major arr. Geminiani after Violin Sonata Op. 5 no. 3

Edmund Finnis The Centre is Everywhere

George Frideric Handel Concerto Grosso in B flat major Op. 6 no. 7

Harpsichord / Musical Director

Frederick Waxman

Violin

Agata Daraškaitė

Charlotte Amherst

Davina Clarke

James Toll

Maxim del Mar
Naomi Burrell

Oliver Cave

Sophie Simpson

Viola

Joanne Miller

Thomas Kettle

Cello

George Ross

Joseph Crouch

Double Bass

Carina Cosgrave

Photography © Sam Cornish

A new production of

Serse (1738) by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

Frederick Waxman Musical Director/Producer

Sam Rayner Director

Emma Hollows Designer

Chris Burr Lighting Designer
Philip Barrett Associate Producer

 Cecelia Hall Serse

Sarah Tynan Romilda

James Laing Arsamene

Anna Cavaliero Atalanta

Timothy Nelson Elviro/Ariodate