Hérodias – Wind Hunger first performed in 1993 at Teatro Ponchielli in Cremona and this year’s VIE Festival is the opportunity to see the work restaged.

The play was inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé’s unfinished poem “Hérodias”, of which only three fragments and some notes endured.

The main figure is Hérodias (or Salome, despite Mallarmé prefers to call her with her mother’s name to diversify her from the modern Salome and related stereotypes: the seven veils etc.) examined through the enormous loneliness and bitterness she is experiencing.

The set design, conceived by the famous contemporary visual artist Alighiero e Boetti prematurely passed away in 1994, is a distinctive sign of those times when theatre could trust on very active collaborations between art creators of various disciplines, mostly painters or visual artists in general.

Before meeting the choreographer Julie Ann Anzilotti, Alighiero e Boetti had never worked on a theatre creation before. He started shortly before his death and with such a fervour that he encouraged the choreographer herself to the point of dispelling her doubts.

The red backdrop, the little curtain by Boetti and the rest of the set create an evocative space for metamorphosis, a “sacred” enclosure of geometrical lucidity and suggestive visual inventions.

This artistic set design is a symbol of great beauty and gives the entire performance the authoritative tone typical of many productions of that time.

The choreographic narration finds its double in the original musicality of the language, embodied here by Gabriella Bartolomei’s voice-over and by Paul Hindemith’s captivating music.