PUTNEY-Yellow Barn Artist Residency hosts "Works in Process," a performance of Gregorious - The Holy Sinner by Sequentia, featuring Benjamin Bagby, Jasmina Črnčič, and Lukas Papenfusscline, on Wednesday, Jan. 8, at 7 p.m.
"The 12th-century German knight and poet, Hartmann von Aue, relates an astonishing tale of victory over despair," organizers wrote in a news release. "Sequentia performs this premiere reconstruction about a man tossed about by fortune and unaware of his incestuous origins, who returns from near death to become a great holy man. Hartmann's ancient tale reaches far into the past, echoing the presence of Oedipus in its darkest moments. At its most inspiring, it is a tale of limitless possibility and inextinguishable hope."
Bagby (voice and harp), known for his performance of the "Beowulf" epic, will share a narrator role with Jasmina Črnčič (voice and harp) and Lukas Papenfusscline (voice).
This special presentation of Gregorius precedes Sequentia formally premiering the work in New York City. Audience members are invited to stay for a post-concert conversation with the artists.
Sequentia is celebrating its 48th season with this addition to "The Lost Songs Project," combining the talents of three extraordinary storyteller-singers, with the accompaniment of two matched Romanesque harps, for this surprisingly modern medieval tale.
Bagby said the piece will be sung and spoken in the original medieval German verse, with video titles in English. The artists will assume the roles of various characters, but also function as narrators, in direct communication with their courtly audience.
Although the medieval version by von Aue survives in multiple text manuscripts, Bagby said his tale "was probably told orally: sung, spoken, and accompanied, for courtly gatherings of sophisticated listeners who could never get enough."
Sequentia's reconstruction of Hartmann's masterpiece retells this story in the same style that captivated binge-listening courtly audiences in the years around 1200.
As late as the mid-20th century, Hartmann's Gregorius inspired the Nobel Prize–winning author Thomas Mann to retell the story in modern prose, published under the title of Der Erwählte (The Chosen One) in 1952.
Admission is free to this concert at The Big Barn, but reservations are appreciated at yellowbarn.org.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.