What happens when two people meet again after a long time? Half her life, Penelope waits for Ulysses to return, making longing her purpose in life, before Ulysses reappears after decades of war and errantry. But what has remained of the former intimacy? Is homecoming after the experiences still possible at all? And what does home mean for each individual? The music theatre RETURNING HOME, directed by Ludger Engels, explores these questions based on Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (1640), mirrored by Korean Gagok songs that were composed almost at the same time.
The musical forms of expression, which at first glance seem so different and which deal in different ways with motifs of native land, foreign land and longing, meet in the musical and spatial dialogue of two ensembles, superimpose one another and coalesce. The protagonists move through newly emerging places of encounter, with themselves and the other – the one who is deviating from the familiar.
