Heart of darkness. Ciklus Ensemble & Yelmo de Mambrino Theater

Prices: 16€ and 14€.

Duration: 65 min.

Inspired by Dante Aligieri's Inferno, Conrad, Conrad, captured an inner journey to the human conscience, to its struggle between savagery and reason, between approaching God or believing oneself to be God. Set in the Belgian Congo of King Leopold II, idolatries and excesses follow one after the other until they generate a horror for which everyone denies responsibility. Finally, it is the individual who, faced with the surrounding horror, is forced to battle with himself in order not to destroy himself. In a society like today's, in which individualistic hedonism is the prevailing value and whose consequences are felt from the global economy to intimate relationships, Marlow's diary questions us about the path to choose.

On a stage wrapped in white candles, Marlowe, the only actor, will relive his journey along the Congo River in dialogue with Chinese shadows, visiting the spaces he has lived, faceless silhouettes, darkness engraved in his heart, ghosts of all those who return to his memory to bear witness.

The voice being the main icon of the opera, Estrada Torío analyzes the spectrum of the voice and the instruments, which are deconstructed and electronically reinserted in the form of an enveloping space.

After its premiere at the Mixtur Festival in Barcelona and at the Palau de la Música in Valencia last year, Ciklus Ensemble presents a new extended version. This project has been realized thanks to the Leonardo grant to Researchers and Cultural Creators 2018 of the BBVA Foundation awarded to Iñaki Estrada Torío.

ARTISTIC FILE

Musical composition and production manager: Iñaki Estrada Torío

Libretto and dramatic direction: Jesús Eguía Armenteros (Yelmo de Mambrino Teatro)

Musical Direction: Asier Puga (Ciklus Ensemble)

Electronic assistance, creation and foley: Juan Andrés Beato and Alicia Lázaro Arteaga

CAST (VOICE RECORDED): YELMO DE MAMBRINO TEATRO

Marlow: Marcos García Barrero

Company Director: Rafael Navarro

Palala: Javier Ortiz

Russian: Jorge Lorente

Kurtz's Fiancée: Sandra Jimenez

Pilgrim: Jesús Eguía Armenteros

Kurtz: Ernesto Gil

LIVE MUSIC: CIKLUS ENSEMBLE

Violin: David López

Cello: Paula Azcona

Flute: Rakel Rivera

Clarinet: Lucía Otaegi

Accordion: Mateja Zenzerovic

Percussion: Isaac Irimía

Piano: Nikolaos Stavlas

Management: Asier Puga

CIKLUS ENSEMBLE

Since its creation in 2010, Ciklus Ensemble has been developing a personal style when creating its artistic proposals. In Ciklus the experimentation and search for new forms of communication, as well as the exchange and collaboration between different artistic disciplines, has been acquiring a great importance in the design and development of their projects. Music is mixed with words, technology, movement, in search of new artistic experiences that question what a concert and an ensemble of the XXI century can or should be.

Since its beginnings, Ciklus Ensemble has performed in festivals and cycles throughout Spain. At the same time, from the beginning, Ciklus has developed an intense and fruitful commitment to contemporary musical creation, commissioning and/or premiering more than a dozen works by different authors.

The interest of Ciklus Ensemble for the sound world of Iñaki Estrada, and the good artistic and creative understanding that has always existed between group and composer, has led them to collaborate on several occasions. The fact that Iñaki Estrada wanted to count on Ciklus Ensemble for the premiere of his opera "El corazón de las tinieblas", represents a great challenge for the group, as well as a great illusion to return to work and enter, once again, in the sound imagery of Estrada.

MAMBRINO YELMO DE MAMBRINO TEATRO

Theater collective founded in 2006 by Alicia Pilarte, Jesús Eguía Armenteros, Gema Rabasco and Sergio Álvarez under the quixotic premise of metamorphosing a barber's basin or chamber pot into the most marvelous knight's helmet ever forged: Mambrino's helmet. His creations are based on the magical richness of the actor and the poetic possibilities of the transmutation of objects. Since its inception, Yelmo de Mambrino has worked with the music of composer Iñaki Estrada Torío. This is their sixth show.