Susanne Maier-Staufen, how will we experience the four soloists in Ich geh unter lauter Schatten on stage? What can you reveal about their costumes?

The song cycle Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil by Gérard Grisey is embodied in our music theatre adaptation by four women, instead of just one singer. Through these four different soprano personalities, we have four very different temperaments as a starting point. The costumes reflect the respective biographies of these exemplary personalities and describe in very different ways the reason for which they cross the threshold between life and death. Due to the size of the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum, I work with the costumes of the four women in a very sculptural way, clear in colour and form in order to show the greatest possible, almost archaic impact and at the same time recognisable archetypal contemporary people.

You already mention the location: what role does the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum play in the development of ideas for the costumes of the musicians?

Hermann Feuchter, the set designer for the production, has repeatedly formulated »the dying of a great industrial culture«, the permanent struggle against the demise of this great hall. The transience inherent in this unbelievable size and past production power touches one immediately. Four large footbridges that look as if they have been broken down lead our protagonists down into the realm of shadows, onto the hall's smooth grey floor. There they are welcomed by the sound created by the musicians of Klangforum Wien and Chorwerk Ruhr. And it is precisely these »music workers« who create the sound arch of the evening that gave us the impulse to understand them as ghosts of the former workers who used to live and walk the hall. Again and again, in the various musical parts of the evening, we find sounds that are indeed reminiscent of steelwork. From all these thoughts and impulses, the idea of a work overall arose almost inevitably in our conversations.

What inspired you in the designs of these costumes?

We were mainly inspired by photographs by Sebastião Salgado, a great photographer who, among other things, photographed gold workers in the mines in South America. In the photographs, it seems as if the people merge with their surroundings. Other works by Salgado show burning oil fields in Kuwait, where the workers' suits take on the colour of the oil, and here, too, the impression of the blending of these elements is created. This is exactly the kind of effect of merging with the ground we are hoping for in the work overalls, for which we have transferred the colour and pattern of the hall floor to the fabrics from which they are made. The musicians and chorists are, so to speak, fused with the floor, with the place, the realm of shadows. Ich geh unter lauter Schatten can almost be taken literally; they are the shadows under which the four women move and into which they are incorporated, taken in; by which they are embraced.

Ich geh unter lauter Schatten, from 11 August 2022, Jahrhunderthalle Bochum