Following five-star performances in Linz, Amsterdam and Porto in 2009 and 2010, Michel van der Aa’s third stage work, The Book of Disquiet , will receive its German premiere at the Staatstheater Saarbrücken on 20 May 2011.
The libretto to The Book of Disquiet is constructed from text fragments by the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who often cast himself in a series of distinct characters, or ‘heteronyms’. Van der Aa portrays these multiple personalities through music, live action and video, described by the Guardian’s Andrew Clements as “a beautifully shot parade of visuals”. Klaus Maria Brandauer stars as Pessoa’s alter ego, bookseller Bernando Soares, while the Portuguese fado star Ana Moura appears on film as Ophelia, a girl in Soares’s dreams.