Michel van der Aa: Book of Disquiet

Michel van der Aa’s latest music theatre work, The Book of Disquiet, was the first staged production in Linz’s Cultural Capital of Europe celebrations in January 2009.
Following his opera After Life, which enjoyed a sell-out run at the Holland Festival in 2006, van der Aa again provides cutting-edge integration of music, live action and video, here built from text fragments by Fernando Pessoa.

The Portuguese poet often cast himself in a series of distinct characters, or ‘heteronyms’, prompting van der Aa to portray multiple personalities on video and soundtrack, surrounding the central figure of actor Klaus Maria Brandauer on stage, with an ensemble from the Bruckner Orchestra conducted by Dennis Russell Davies

Click here to read an interview with Aa regarding The Book of Disquiet.