Earthrise

Musictheatre

“This is not what this century was supposed to be about.”

A performance of music theatre at the crossroads between early and contemporary music, Earthrise brings to the stage an age of scientific revolutions, science denial and witch trials: our own. Astronomer Johannes Kepler and his mother Katharina Kepler are the unexpected guides inviting us to look for answers in our dreams.

Earthrise tells of a world that is losing its mind. In the year 1624 (or 2024) while political and religious forces fight for influence, scientific research unravels crucial data that calls into question our way of thinking about our place in the universe – and we react with nothing but confusion and embarrassment.

In his science-​fiction novel The Dream, astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630) tried to advance a new worldview by speaking to his readers’ imagination: what would our world look like if seen from the Moon? Kepler toiled against all forms of dogmatism, and even had to defend his own mother Katharina Kepler (1546 – 1622) in a witchcraft trial. However, he never ceased to believe in a secret harmony governing the world; a harmony we get to experience fully only with the help of science and the arts.

Inspired by the lives of Johannes and Katharina Kepler, Earthrise combines 17^th-​century compositions with genre-​bending new music by composer Juha T. Koskinen and vocal artist Anni Elif Egecioglu. The libretto is devised by writer-​director Aleksi Barrière, providing his frequent collaborator, actor Thomas Kellner, with a new multilingual tour-​de-​force. Helming the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, cembalist Marianna Henriksson invites music by Kepler’s contemporaries such as Scheidt, De Monte, Harant, or Praetorius to enter a dialogue with the music of our time. Embracing a dramaturgy of multimedia collage, the piece’s visual world is created together with lighting designer Étienne Exbrayat and video artist Lucia Schmidt.

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