The clown has been balancing on the tightrope that separates sense from nonsense since time immemorial. His audience can watch with amusement as he falls, picks himself up again with unshakeable hope, adapts to the “zeitgeist” and then – cheerfully – continues to fail. But what does the clown feel? And who is he when he has removed his make-up? Verena Tönjes & Daria Tudor have embarked on a search for this ambivalent figure in the art of song... The idea for this programme came from the song “The Clown” by Ethel Smyth (text: Maurice Baring.) On hearing it, one immediately senses the inner conflict of this figure: the first bars in the piano sound like a mischievous wink, but the sustained melody in a minor key and the direct description of the clown as “poor” paint a melancholy picture. This clown laughs at his hard fate and knows that although he is chained up, he is by no means unfree. The clown dances on the precipice, but he dances! “The cycle 5 Songs of the Clown” by Erich Wolfgang Korngold is based on the songs of the witty fool called Feste in William Shakespeare’s comedy “Twelfth Night”. Shakespeare’s poetry and Korngold’s musical language paint a highly complex picture of this misunderstood character, who possesses great intelligence and emotional depth. It is not without a certain irony that the cycle was intended for a production entitled: Shakespeare’s Women, Clowns and Songs. Women, clowns – the main thing is outsiders! Korngold, who was already a successful film composer in Hollywood, wrote the songs in 1937 during a stay in Austria. After the Nazis seized power, however, they confiscated confiscated the Jewish composer’s property in Vienna and destroyed the scores. Korngold was able to move to California in time, where he rewrote the song cycle from memory. Shakespeare’s text has often been set to music, including by Robert Schumann as the final song of the Fool. Schumann’s firm commentary on the futility of human endeavour – “for the rain, it raineth every day” – was already equipped around 1840 with the musical features that we later encounter so often as typical of clowns: 6/8 time, dissonant suggestions, rhythmic dotting, ... Verena Tönjes is as much in demand on the opera stage as on the concert podium. in demand. The mezzo-soprano from Nordenham has been a member of the ensemble since 2020 at the Staatstheater Mainz, where she was most recently seen as Carmen and Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier. Pianist Daria Tudor comes from Ploiești, Romania, and made her debut as a soloist with the Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra in Bucharest at the age of nine. She studied at the Berlin University of the Arts with Pascal Devoyon and Björn Lehmann. Daria has won numerous prizes in international competitions.