Edgar Allan Poe’s Black Cat opens 2019 season at Teatro Mayor

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Edgar Allan Poe’s short story Black Cat opens the 2019 season at Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo with two performances – Friday, January 25 and Saturday 26.

Set to cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach and soundtrack by former Japan band frontman David Sylvian, whose solo career includes the albums Brilliant Trees and Secrets of the Beehive, Black Cat is a multi-disciplinary work created for the stage by Frank Hoffmann and with musical direction by Martin Haselböck. Haselböck in 1985 founded the period-instrument Orchester Wiener Akademie and as a renown organist has 70 recording to his name with conductors Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, and Riccardo Muti.

First published for Philadelphia’s The Saturday Evening Post in 1843, Poe’s Black Cat is a psychological case study in guilt, told in the first-person. One of the American author’s darkest tales and an indictment of domestic violence and alcohol abuse, the story is the death row confession of a nameless man who murdered his wife and strangled his pets. “Tomorrow I die. Tomorrow I die, and today I want to tell the world what happened and thus perhaps free my soul from the horrible weight which lies upon it,” read the opening lines.

In a co-production between Teatro Mayor, Théâtre National du Luxemburg and Musikkonzept Wien (Austria), the music of Black Cat will be played by the Wiener Akademie Orchestra and Los Angeles-based Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra.  Dancers Sylvia Camarda and Jean-Guillaume Weiss are also cast in this visually rich work that crosses the boundaries between performing arts and visual arts.

Austrian film director and screenwriter Virgil Widrich is in charge of the multimedia projections.

Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo

Ave Calle 170 No.67-51.

Performances start at 8:00 pm.

Tickets: $40,000 pesos.

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