She and He, each with their own memories in two different worlds. Can they find each other? She immerses herself in emotional Sapphic poetry, reminisces, speaks of desire. He is at a turning point. His words are mere fragments of memories threaded together; he rewrites the past. Her language is epic, like the memory of ancient Western civilisation. His language is faltering, the language of the modern age.

An Index of Memories is a staged concert about memory and its emotions. It departs from the texts left to us by the Ancient Greek poet Sappho. The love, erotic desire and the hope she articulates are timeless emotional memories.

Annelies Van Parys had already set a number of Sappho’s poems to music. They have now become the starting-point for a full-length composition in which past and present meet and complement one another. Caroline Petrick puts the concept of ‘staged concert’ to the test. Between performance and concert, space and absence of space, between index and memory, she searches for a way in which music can be thought.

A production by Muziektheater Transparant in co-production with deSingel, Spectra Ensemble and VocaalLAB Nederland.

Composition: Annelies van Parys
Lyrics: Sappho & Annelies van Parys
Conductor: Marit Strindlund
Director: Caroline Petrick
Instrumental ensemble: Spectra Ensemble
VocaalLAB soloists: Els Mondelaers (mezzo soprano), Arnout Lems (baritone), Camille Hesketh (soprano), Maria de los Angeles Marques Fernandez (soprano), Fanny Alofs (mezzo soprano/alto)
Piano repetitor: Henry Kelder