Death in Venice at Slovene National Theatre

About the Event

One of the greatest German writers and a Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann wrote in his novella Death in Venice that 'Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous – to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, and the absurd”. This novella gained huge popularity also on account of Visconti’s legendary film of the same name from 1971 that depicts Mann’s rather pessimistic self‐prophecy, his pondering introspection and, most importantly, his perpetual yearning for ideals, especially the Beauty. Internationally acclaimed choreographer and the Prešeren Foundation Award winner, Valentina Turcu, envisioned her new drama ballet Death in Venice as an intense dialogue with Mahler’s delicate, yet passionate symphonic oeuvre. The inherent result of such fusion of artistry and sensibility for the detail is a comprehensive Turcu’s dance reinterpretation of Mann’s novella that addresses important societal issues, exposing the artist’s depreciated intrinsic value and his precarious position in the ongoing period of decadence that is affecting us all.