Songs for the Dark Times

Songs for Dark Times

Songs for Dark Times is inspired by the tense, electric atmosphere of interwar Berlin — a world of cabaret, freedom, danger, and a society on the brink. Music by composers such as Mahler, Zemlinsky, and Schreker is reimagined in a dark, immersive (meta-)cabaret aesthetic.

Concept and musical direction: Markellos Chryssikos
Arrangements: Panos Iliopoulos
Stage design / stage direction / light design: Stephanos Droussiotis
Soprano: Aphrodite Patoulidou
featuring Ergon Ensemble

The musical performance Songs for Dark Times draws its inspiration from the atmosphere of interwar Berlin, a metropolis teetering on the brink of destruction.
“Will there be singing in the dark times? Yes, there will be singing—about the dark times.” Taking this epigram from Brecht’s Svendborg Poems as their point of departure, the creators of the performance turn their gaze to the era of the Weimar Republic, when Germany was transforming into a cauldron of simmering contradictions.

New sounds of African American music coming from the United States, the first stirrings of pop art, and the experiments of early modernism; new sexual norms and permissiveness; the archetype of the femme fatale and the underworld of crime—all come to the fore as sources of artistic inspiration. Behind them looms the constant threat of economic collapse, the rise of fascism, and a society stumbling drunkenly toward the Second World War. The forebodings of this descent into darkness run subtly through the music of Gustav Mahler, written decades before the Weimar Republic, laying the groundwork for composers of that later period such as Alexander Zemlinsky and Franz Schreker, and providing the raw material for the performance’s richly textured canvas.

Iconic works by Mahler alongside overlooked gems of interwar musical creation are presented under the musical direction of Markellos Chryssikos, in arrangements by composer Panos Iliopoulos, shaping a dark (post-)cabaret aesthetic. The multifaceted visual world and lighting design of the performance are crafted by director Stefanos Droussiotis, while at the centre stands internationally acclaimed soprano Aphrodite Patoulidou with the renowned ensemble Ergon—offering a spellbinding interpretation poised between darkness and light, past and present, the contradictions and hopes of an era that insistently returns.