Good Friday of the year 1300 has gone down in the annals of mankind as the day when a lonely man, pondering his confused life and the confusing circumstances of his time, embarks on a journey: Into the infernal abysses of hell, to the mountain of purification and finally to the realms of heaven.
For thirteen years Dante, driven out of his hometown Florence, worked on his monumental work: La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy). Powerful in words and images, the visionary describes the reality behind the ostensible world. No other literary work has shaped our notions of guilt and damnation, atonement and forgiveness, knowledge and redemption more lastingly.
In 2018, Dortmund’s ballet director begins his artistic exploration of this multi-layered vision of the Last Days, which will come to an end in 2021, the 700th year of Dante’s death: “We, too, wander through a desperate forest. Where do we turn?”
In Dante’s spirit, Xin Peng Wang creates profoundly sharp images for the vital music of the award-winning American composer Michael Gordon, which transfer the explosive power of the epic to the stage of the Dortmund Opera House: “We owe hell on our way to paradise!”
