Romeo Castellucci

Dante's 'La Divina Commedia' is a poem in three parts about a journey to hell, purgatory and finally, paradise. Romeo Castellucci created his own free adaptation on the gigantic stage of the Cour d'Honneur in Avignon, in the palace where the first French pope, Clement V, resided. The pope allows Dante to descend into the inferno. We are confronted with man's confusion, the fragmentation of the community and the darkness of art.

Take5* is a filmed series of encounters between 5 artists and 2 guests who meet for the first time in a specific city to speak about Europe, festivals, the arts and their role in society.

In the autumn of 2014, playwright and theatrical director Romeo Castellucci participated in the Festival d'Automne in Paris. Nicolas Klotz resumed the show, questioning its creator in a triptych dedicated to his daring creative process.

Theatron, the film by the multi-award-winning film-maker Giulio Boato, is an unprecedented portrait of Romeo Castellucci. Castellucci and his theatre company, the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, are key protagonists of avantgarde theatre. To a Vivaldi soundtrack, Theatron layers Romeo and Claudia Castellucci’s comments with the testimonies of dramaturgs, composers, choreographers, critics and actors (including Willem Dafoe) who have collaborated with the director. Between rehearsals and international tours, the film is a deep reflection not just on the performances, but also on the connection between the author and the representation of human nature.

A nightmare which envelops the everyday tranquility of domestic life, turning it into a tragedy. Confusion between man, animal and God.

A secret Soviet Institute conducts scientific and occult experiments on animals and human beings to create the perfect person. The KGB general and his aides turn a blind eye to erotic adventures of the director of the Institute, scandalous debauches of prominent scientists and their cruel and insane research. One day, a radical ultra right-wing group arrives in the laboratory under the guise of test subjects. They get a task - to eradicate the decaying elements of the Institute’s community, and if needs be, destroy the fragile world of secret Soviet science.

No synopsis available yet.

The man who goes through purgatory – the “song of the earth” – is a curious being, constantly stopped by the concrete nature of the things and objects that surround him, in a depiction of his own life. This material occupies him, blocks his way, attaches him and often torments him. It bears witness to what exactly purgatory is to Romeo Castellucci: human life in its daily repetition, familiarity with everyday tasks, the trap of routine, the experience of the ordinary body, encounters with the finished world, known nature, the substances of life.

The story is set at the beginning of the Christian era on a large terrace of Herod’s palace, during the reign of Herod Antipas. At night, on a terrace of the palace, Salome, Herod’s stepdaughter, is gazed at passionately by Narraboth, captain of the guard. Jochanaan, a prophet, is imprisoned in a cistern for having slandered Herod. He proclaims the coming of Jesus, but his message is met with incomprehension by the guards. Salome hears the prophet. She manages to convince the guards to bring Jochanaan out so she can see him. Both fascinated and frightened by his prophecies, Salome falls passionately in love with this man. Richard Strauss’s opera at the 2018 Salzburg Festival, directed by Romeo Castellucci at the Felsenreitschule. In her debut in the title role, Asmik Grigorian distinguished herself with her talents as a singer and actress.

Dante's 'La Divina Commedia' is a poem in three parts about a journey to hell, purgatory and finally, paradise. Romeo Castellucci created his own free adaptation on the gigantic stage of the Cour d'Honneur in Avignon, in the palace where the first French pope, Clement V, resided. The pope allows Dante to descend into the inferno. We are confronted with man's confusion, the fragmentation of the community and the darkness of art.

No synopsis available yet.

Premiered in 1787, “Don Giovanni” exposes the timeless theme of a man hovering between vitality and destruction. Neither morality nor the law can stop this serial lover in his quest to conquer all women as he places his own pleasure above all other principles. Today, the rich depth of Mozart’s masterpiece still astonishes audiences with its mix of comedy and seriousness, pleasure and love, entertainment and murder. At the helm of this new Salzburg Festival production, in a near-live broadcast from the Great Festival Hall, director Romeo Castellucci promises to focus on the ambiguity and inner turmoil of this serial lover whose immoral behaviour condemns him to a deadly solitude. The exceptional cast – featuring Italian baritone Davide Luciano (Don Giovanni), Russian soprano Nadezhda Pavlova (Donna Anna) and Finnish bass Mika Kares (the Commendatore) – is accompanied by the chorus and musicians of the musicAeterna ensemble, conducted by Vitaly Polonsky and Teodor Currentzis.

Moses und Aron is a three-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg with the third act unfinished. The 2015 Production was led by Romeo Castellucci in Paris. Moses und Aron was filmed for television by film director François-René Martin, in co-production with the Paris Opera, Bel air Media and Arte, with support from the CNC.

Romeo Castellucci is one of Europe’s best-known directors, a firebrand known for productions that are as thought-provoking as they are visually stunning. He returns to Peak Performances with the American premiere of “Democracy in America,” freely inspired by the work of Alexis de Tocqueville. Castellucci conjures majorettes who stir the crowd’s enthusiasm for democracy in America, colonial settlers who confound the native Americans, and a puritan couple who struggle to farm a barren land. He asks us to consider the empty promises of a political system steeped in Biblical egalitarianism rather than the concept of tragedy so essential to ancient Greek democracy, the dangers of majority rule, and the inherent violence that springs from religious puritanism and territorial conquests. His challenging, soul-stirring brand of theatrical magic transposes these painful, profound ideas into an enticing, vibrant, celebratory work of art.

Romeo Castellucci is one of Europe’s best-known directors, a firebrand known for productions that are as thought-provoking as they are visually stunning. He returns to Peak Performances with the American premiere of “Democracy in America,” freely inspired by the work of Alexis de Tocqueville. Castellucci conjures majorettes who stir the crowd’s enthusiasm for democracy in America, colonial settlers who confound the native Americans, and a puritan couple who struggle to farm a barren land. He asks us to consider the empty promises of a political system steeped in Biblical egalitarianism rather than the concept of tragedy so essential to ancient Greek democracy, the dangers of majority rule, and the inherent violence that springs from religious puritanism and territorial conquests. His challenging, soul-stirring brand of theatrical magic transposes these painful, profound ideas into an enticing, vibrant, celebratory work of art.

In an environment coloured with talcum powder, the Soldiers of Conception escort a Child-Judge as he walks backwards across the set. When he bumps into the Tables of the Law, reality is overturned and all interiors becomes exterior.

Mussolini is surrounded by pictures torn from a history-generated dream which gradually merge into everyday reality. Harlequin is the servant of two masters. The permanence of the clergy in the Eternal City is placed under a great bell which swings without a clapper.

No synopsis available yet.

If in ‘Das Rheingold’ the curtain fell with the hegemony of the gods in Valhalla, the second part of ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ opens with a mortal who, alone on Earth, faces a raging storm. Siegmund is called the hunted warrior, and when he briefly finds peace in a concealed hut, he meets the beautiful but equally hapless Sieglinde. An ardent and natural passion blossoms, but at the same time a hidden past surfaces that will seal their fate.

No synopsis available yet.

Famed Italian director Romeo Castellucci re-envisions his groundbreaking 1997 production Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) as a series of “fragments” rearranged and positioned against each other—a clash between the ethereal and the obscure, the power of rhetoric and language stripped to its source.

Famed Italian director Romeo Castellucci re-envisions his groundbreaking 1997 production Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) as a series of “fragments” rearranged and positioned against each other—a clash between the ethereal and the obscure, the power of rhetoric and language stripped to its source.

Inspired by Mark Rothko’s refusal to complete commissioned work in New York’s Four Seasons restaurant. A highly stylized, visually stunning exploration of absence, negation, and solitude.

As the first character to appear – the Mother – enters a square, gold-walled room, she blends so perfectly into the background that all perspective is lost. The visual order is disarticulated by the reflection of the gold to such an extent that even the woman skin loses its “hold” on solidity.

A human figure dressed as a woman is anatomically exposed by means of a series of photographic poses. The show is seeped from beginning to end in darkness, an allusion to the photographic negative.

A nightmare which envelops the everyday tranquility of domestic life, turning it into a tragedy. Confusion between man, animal and God.

In the story of Moses, as recounted in Exodus, there is something inherent to the essence of our time. The prophet of monotheism is presented as a man reacting to the difficulties that this God—without name and without image—poses before him, beginning with the abandonment of his newborn body in the waters of the Nile. At the same time, "Go down, Moses" evokes the famous spiritual song of the black slaves of America, who identified with the Jewish people, as a foresight of their return to Africa. The Israelites, capable of returning from the Babylonian exile and—thanks to Moses—freeing themselves from slavery in Egypt, were the symbol of their coming liberation, just as that song of the American slaves can now signify the condition of our own disembodied slavery, exiled from being. Everything in between is the object of this work.

Le Maillon Théatre is a huge pavilion originally built for international exhibitions. A number of people are present, but nothing happens. Something may happen outside, on the other side of the window which separates the theatre from the car park, but inside the theatre, everyone is lost.

Everything is focused on the canto of divine glory, to such a degree that the spectators' bodies seem to dissolve in the light, the sounds and the reflections as though they were losing their substance in a clarity so intense that it absorbs everything, that it was now impossible for anyone to distinguish the place's perspectives, the proportions of things, the consistency of the objects. Any psychology and any subjectivity seem to be challenged. It is there, in this path taken through the église des Célestins that each spectator is proposed a question: what is his political, social place, faced with the malfunctioning of existence?

Romeo Castellucci's production of Christoph Willibald Gluck's mythic opera. Concurrently via projected text, we learn the story of Els, a bedridden woman with locked-in syndrome, conscious but near-completely paralyzed. A live video feed from the hospital shows Els listening to the music along with the audience.

A spectral representation of all names. All the nouns found in the Italian dictionary are projected, in a sequence, one by one, onto a giant screen. These nouns potentially represent all objects in reality that have a name. The speed of this sequence is given by our ability, based on our retina and our memory, to retain a word that appears in a flash, lasting one tenth of a second. This constricts our gaze, which soon reaches a tipping point where a fusion occurs, just before our perception loses its grip. In the resulting flicker, it is no longer possible to distinguish the single terms. In the borderline situation created by this frenetic series of words, some of them will leave a trace on each spectator’s visual cortex, while others, the majority, will be lost.