Media Library

LABO(R)LABÉ

takes place in September

“How do we mingle our kisses so happily that everyone can find their joy in everyone else?”
Radically sensuous, deeply moving and astonishingly familiar. This is how the sonnets of the French Renaissance poet Louise Labé (1526–1566), also called “the pretty ropemaker“ of Lyons, sound. The perspective of the Petrarchan tradition of poetic adoration of an unattainable lady is turned on its head for the first time by Louise Labé. Her poems yearn from the feminine perspective for the man – a revolutionary break that even now attracts fascination, furore and arguments.

Concert with Agnès Guipont, voice and grand piano (FRA) | Jonathan Bratoëff, guitar (FRA) | Pauline Dupuy, double bass (FRA) | Christian Filips, voice (DEU)

The power and immediate effect of these poems is demonstrated in the project Labo(r)Labé by the musician Agnès Guipont, who has been working on musical settings of the sonnets since 2018. In the form of a conversation concert, Agnès Guipont brings us close to the world of the Renaissance, in which music and poetry were inseparable. With musical and poetic miniatures, idiosyncratic insights and anecdotes, she invites us to join her on a Tour de Labé. Her compositions are influenced by the tradition of the German art song and by more contemporary music styles (chanson, jazz, rock, electronic). To coincide with this festival première a six-track EP of Labo(r)Labé is being released, produced by Jonathan Bratoëff – the first step towards producing an album featuring all 24 sonnets. Exclusively for this evening the French songwriter Pauline Dupuy will be responding to Labé’s sonnets on her double bass. Other bonus tracks: Violence in finesse, an introduction by Lyons literature professor Michèle Clement, a musical intervention by the singer and poet Christian Filips and a verse analysis by translator Monika Fahrenbach, who has translated the whole oeuvre of Louise Labé into German for the Secession publishing house.

Concert in German.

Curation: Aurélie Maurin

Project leader: Bettina Henningsen