Is madness a means of escaping reality? Or — on the contrary — a way of confronting it? With his monodrama Eight Songs for a Mad King, Peter Maxwell Davies created in 1968 a brilliantly crafted character study of the deranged British monarch George III, whose reign began in 1760, drawing on the king’s own original texts. Seductive melodies stand alongside dissonances in this modern music-theater classic, which sketches a portrait of emotional and mental disintegration: they are provocative, yet at the same time reveal a startling lucidity. The world premiere by another British composer, Bushra El-Turk, sets this historical figure against one of the most contradictory women in mythology and gives Medea a new, distinct voice. Moving between self-empowerment and madness, power and arbitrariness, love and hate, this double bill lets us experience a fractured world — one that may well uncover truths that touch us deeply.
