Thomas Mann – Gustav Mahler – Valentina Turcu
DEATH IN VENICE
Dramatic ballet in eleven scenes
A co-production with the Ballet of the Maribor Slovene National Theatre
Adaptation, choreography, direction and music selection by Valentina Turcu
Music by Gustav Mahler
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, the absurd, wrote one of the greatest German authors and Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Mann in his novella Death in Venice. This work, which gained huge popularity on account of Visconti’s legendary film of the same name from 1971, undoubtedly reflects Mann’s rather pessimistic self-prophecy, his pondering introspection and, most importantly, his perpetual yearning for the ideal of beauty. All this is embodied in the protagonist Gustav, who is kind of a literary amalgam of several brilliant personalities – Tchaikovsky, who allegedly deliberately drank a glass of unboiled tap water, contracting cholera; Mahler and his faultless symphonic perfectionism; and Thomas Mann himself.
Thomas Mann termed his novella Death in Venice (1911) as Tragodie einer Entwurdigung, a “tragedy of degradation”, a degradation shared by numerous aesthetes and modernist artist during fin de sičcle, who became victims of false morals and social condemnation.
A dramatic ballet featuring Gustav Mahler’s refined music that so clearly expresses human states and emotions, Death in Venice is a completely new stage adaptation of Mann’s literary masterpiece. Aiming to create “a perpetual movement of the soul”, Valentina Turcu subtly enters the complex universe of an emotional journey, trembling with the invisible force of Eros and its radical contrast contained by the literary work.
Each detail of this work is thought-through and clear. The drama is powerful, the dance is superb, and the music selection fits perfectly with each segment of the story, testifying to the great talent and accomplishment of Valentina Turcu — Jutarnji list
The ballet Death in Venice is another dance triumph of CNT in Zagreb, a valuable, exceptional and truly beautiful work of art, that also addresses some painful current issues. — Tportal
With this performance featuring an excellent homegrown cast, Valentina Turcu has made an outstanding contribution to what we can now freely call the Golden Age of the Ballet of the CNT in Zagreb. - Večernji list
U ovom je projektu svaki detalj promišljen i jasan, drama prezentna, plesnost vrhunska, a odabir glazbe prijanjajući uz svaki segment priče, legitimacija i svjedočanstvo talenta i naobrazbe Valentine Turcu.— Jutarnji list
Baletom 'Smrt u Veneciji' zagrebački HNK dobio je još jedan plesni hit, vrijedno, kvalitetno i uistinu lijepo umjetničko djelo, koje otvara i neka bolna i aktualna pitanja.— Tportal
Valentina Turcu je s ovom predstavom, sa sjajnim ansamblom stvorenim upravo na našoj pozornici ispisala još jednu sjajnu stranicu, sada već slobodno možemo reći, zlatnog razdoblja Baleta zagrebačkoga HNK.— Večernji list
