In a fantastic surreal orgy of Christmas celebrations, boundaries blur between the present and the past, the living and the dead, human and animal, desire and reality.

In their intermedia opera Bählamms Fest based on Leonora Carrington’s play The Feast of the Lambs, Olga Neuwirth and Elfriede Jelinek gaze into the gaping cracks in the house that the surrealists built while fleeing across Nazi-occupied France in 1940. Neuwirth blasted unfamiliar escape routes out of this intolerable reality into unreal visual and musical spaces in the 1990s.

Bählamms Fest premiered on 15th August 2021 at Ruhtriennale Festival der Künste.

“Dead Centre filled the cavernous Jahrhunderthalle with an eye-popping production… effectively blurring the boundaries between domestic and outdoor horrors, as well as between human and animal savagery… the oddball spirit of ‘Bahlamms Fest’ was tethered to artistic seriousness and skill.” 
New York Times

“It is a nightmare scenario planted in the industrial architecture of Bochum's Jahrhunderthalle. As such, it offers the perfect ambience for this music-theatrical fantasy,”
Süddeutsche Zeitung

“Olga Neuwirth's 1999 opera… is a lament, a horror film, a manifesto and, in this staging, great political art. The stage designers and video artists hardly know any limits here… the technically impressive realisation offers undreamt-of possibilities to create psychedelic, disturbing moments.”
Die Zeit

BÄHLAMM’S FEST is a Ruhrtriennale production.

Conductor
SYLVAIN CAMBRELING

Cast
Theodora KATRIEN BAERTS
Mrs Carnis HILARY SUMMERS
Philip DIETRICH HENSCHEL
Jeremy ANDREW WATTS
Robert / Shepherd / Ram MARCEL BEEKMAN
Elizabeth GLORIA REHM
Violet / Mary LINSEY COPPENS
With soloists from KNABENCHORES DER CHORAKADEMIE DORTMUND 

ENSEMBLE MODERN 
Theremin Vox LYDIA KAVINA 

Dancers
PIERFRANCESCO VICINANZA,  YEN-CHU KU,  NOEMI DE ROSA,  YA-CHIN HUANG, MINJU KIM,  JIHEE KIM,  YI-AN CHEN,  SARA KOLUCHOVA,  JAN CHRIS POLLERT,  SEVAK AVAGYAN

Live-Electronics Performance  JOSÉ MIGUEL FERNANDEZ 
Live-Electronics Design  MARKUS NOISTERNIG,  MANUEL POLETTI (MUSIC UNIT, PARIS) 
Sound design NORBERT OMMER 

Stage and Costume Design NINA WETZEL 
Video Design JACK PHELAN 
Light Design PATRICK FUCHS

Co-Stage Design CHARLOTTE SPICHALSKY
Co-Costume Design ANNEKE GOERTZ
Co-Video Design SÉBASTIEN DUPOUEY

Choregrapher ANNA-LISE BRÉVERS
Assistant Choreographer OLIVIA ANCONA

Dramaturg BARBARA ECKLE
Assistant Director ANDREA TORTOSA
Direction BUSH MOUKARZEL , BEN KIDD 

IMAGES
All photographs: Volker Beushausen