Only one face

"Faces remained the same
they can be used to coagulate air
of self including the time of our"
Vittorio Sereni

The spectators are invited to a musical banquet: 13 people between the ages of seventeen and ninety come together at this festivity. They tell stories about love. These stories are not their own stories, but snippets from conversations with older people in different places. read more The storytellers step forward onto the stage like figures from long ago and with their stories, they sketch images of good or bad fortune with love. The ideal of romantic love that was praised in the folk songs of Brahms is juxtaposed with stories that rarely live up to this utopian ideal of perfect love. The narrators access the life stories of others. Different memories are passed on from person to person and become interchangeable. In playing with them, the narrators become inventors of new stories. The memories are clustered between the music, are sparked and driven by it. Music makes memories real, colors them and creates coherence. The storytellers do not bind themselves to concrete characters. They are not driven by presumption and do not strive to become the center of attention. They are part of a large painting, either coming to life through the music or serving as ornaments. They speak of love as in a dream. Their appearance remains ambiguous, often insinuated and whimsical, just as memory itself. Pictures of fortune and misfortune with love are created. The East Tyrolian Musicbanda Franui plays the German folk songs by Johannes Brahms: songs that tell of affection and farewell, of love’s madness, loss and abysmal grief. The title of the production originates from the reduction of a line of a song – Only one face lives on Earth – and is beautifully ambiguous, just as the music by Franui: you should try to save face at all costs. If you do, it might become a vision.

Dates and cast

World Premiere took place on 27^th of July, 2008
Guest performances: Festival OdeonMusik at the Odeon Wien, Festival Herzrasen at the Neues Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, 2010

A music theater production with the Musicbanda Franui and senior citizens from Bregenz.

With Erika Bösch, Herbert Hammerschmidt, Wilhelm Kiesenhofer, Anni Kneringer, Hermann Kneringer, Eva Kollmann, Herta Ranner, Waltraud Röbbenack, Erwin Schuler, Marianne Stadelmann, Willi Stadelmann, Christiane Weis, Margit Uerdingen, Nikolai Tunkowitsch (violin), Johannes Eder (clarinet, bass clarinet), Romed Hopfgartner (soprano and alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet), Markus Kraler (bass, accordion), Angelika Rainer (harp, zither, singing), Bettina Rainer (dulcimer, guitar, singing), Cornelia Rainer (bandoneon, singing), Markus Rainer (trumpet, cornet, singing), Sylvia Rainer (singing), Andreas Schett (trumpet, cornet, singing), Martin Senfter (valve trombone, singing), Andreas Fuetsch (tuba, singing) | Stage Direction Cornelia Rainer | Text Angelika Rainer | Music Director Andreas Schett | Music Composition Markus Kraler, Andreas Schett (according to the German folk songs by Johannes Brahms) | Stage and Costume design Aurel Lenfert Press

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