Give up die
alten Geister

An evening that crosses times and genres, full of vitality and touch.

What do Mozart's Requiem and the Madeleine, the famous pastry from Marcel Proust's monumental work In Search of Lost Time, have in common? Nothing? It depends.

Where some see incompatibilities and rifts, the Belgian countertenor and director Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe recognises fruitful connections. He is one of the artistic directors of the Antwerp Toneelhuis and stages sensational evenings that shimmer between revue and concert, dance and iconoclasm. With him, the theatre always becomes an echo chamber in which something new emerges from tradition and innovation, past and future.

In Give up die alten Geister, pianists, dancers and actors from different generations come together to create an evening that revolves around memory. The centrepiece is Mozart's unfinished Requiem, which revolves around death and is the subject of countless myths. How is something remembered, learnt, passed on? Proust's childhood memories were evoked by the smell and taste of madeleines. So what role do our senses play? How important is the past for us - or should we let the old ghosts go so that the future can finally begin?