The Ministry Of Wolves (D/AUS)
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales is the most famous collection of fairy tales in the world and the most widely read works of German literature in general. It is a book brimming with the worst crimes ever committed or imagined: kidnappers, murderers, cannibals and torturers are the principle protagonists of the Grimm world. Through more than 200 stories the brothers write of the follies of these fortune seekers who are often involved in the most abominable behaviour. The collective project of the Grimms was deeply romantic – a declaration of war on the rationality of the early 19th Century. They shunned the glow of (the?) enlightenment instead delving into the darkness of the forest and the everlasting struggle with evil : If anything shines permanently over this fairytale Republic, then it is the moon – and under this moon the wolves howl ! As the well-known political philosopher Thomas Hobbes said at the birth of the modern age: “Man is a wolf to man!”
Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten , multi-instrumentalist Mick Harvey (co-founder of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds), Danielle de Picciotto (co-founder of the Love Parade) and Paul Wallfisch , musical director of the Theater Dormund, have now recorded an album embodying and interprting these stories, ” The Ministry of Wolves ” . The album, (which will appear in a special limited edition?) has used the interpretations of the great American poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974 ) as a source of inspiration. In her famous work ‘Transformations’ Anne Sexton literally transforms seventeen of the Grimm fairy tales in a breathtaking and illuminatingly new manner .
The collaboration came through a request from Paul Wallfisch to the other musicians to be involved in writing music for a new play on the themes of Grimm’s Fairy Tales: The Republic of the Wolves (which premiered on February 16, 2014) saw director Kai Voges, stage director Claudia Bauer (last in Dortmund withWorld on a Wire) and The Ministry of Wolves, playing the music live on stage, catapult Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and many more well known stories into the quagmire of our urban present. The play has been a resounding success and occupied the top of the German theatre charts for several weeks.
To present the music internationally the musicians decided to go on tour with a multimedia live show. The 90 minute program presents, amongst others, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow Whiteand Rapunzel sung and spoken with lyrics inspired by Anne Sexton, whose texts have been freely adapted by the musicians themselves, together with the beautiful back projections art pieces made possible by Danielle de Picciotto. It is a cheerfully romantic evening with bleak, sinister undertones amidst much fun and frolicking which has only just begun its mysterious mission of enthusing audiences all over Europe.
Gentry Sultan