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Elisabeth
Introduction to performance
The desperate LOVE between the ‘Death’ and the Empress, who had lived her life more dramatically than any other.
- The fascinating story based on truth meets the fantastic imagination in this grand and great European musical, ELISABETH!
SYNOPSIS
“Tell the court, Lucheni? Why did you kill the Empress Elisabeth?”
“The purpose? I killed her because she wanted to die.”
Prologue in the nocturnal world of the dead and the dreamers, where Lucheni justifies his deed: Elisabeth has been in love with Death. To prove his point, Lucheni calls up the lost world of the Habsburgian Empire. Elisabeth had her first face to face with Death when she shocks the high society of Bavaria in a circus act. After that she accompanies her elder sister Helene to become engaged with the emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph. He however falls in love with Sisi. Lucheni depicts the wedding as the beginning of the end of the Habsburg Empire: Death rings the wedding bells and presents himself in the ballroom of Schönbrunn as Franz Joseph’s rival.
At the court of Vienna the young empress encounters a hostile world, she feels kept in a golden cage, her mother-in-law Sophie subjects her and Franz Joseph does not support her. She feels abandoned and her melancholy turns into hatred. Death enters the scene and brings himself in remembrance by taking the life of one of Elisabeth’s children. The following years are filled with unpleasant events and visitations – while in the Viennese coffee house, idle people wait for the end of the world to come.
But Elisabeth realises that she is not powerless. She refuses to be dependent on anyone, even Death. While Lucheni further excites the ugly moos of people, calling for revolution because the support of milk has run out, “she” is using all the milk for her beauty baths, cause she wants to pamper her beauty and to use it to get free, belonging only to herself. Finally Franz Joseph has to accept.
Elisabeth’s greatest triumph is the reconciliation of the Emperor with the Hungarians. For Lucheni it is the right sign that the new era will belong to nationalism. While Elisabeth is leading a very self-centered life, also visiting surprisingly a madhouse, her hyper-sensitive son Rudolph is offered the friendship of Death, and Sophie, who lost her influence on the Emperor, spins an intrigue to break his faithfulness.
After an Adjutant had chosen a girl in a brothel, Death reveals to Elisabeth that her husband had infected her with the “certain malady”. She considers this mishap to be her chance of freedom. She leaves her family, travelling throughout Europe. Lucheni suspects that Elisabeth is trying to run away from getting older.
Death keeps now in Rudolf’s company, persuading him to oppose his father. While Elisabeth retires in a more spiritual world of poetry, in Vienna comes up the Teutomania around Schönerer, the voice of fascism of the future. Rudolf politically outmanoeuvred and in despair, pleads Elisabeth to intervene with the Emperor. As she denies, Death id waiting fit Rudolf at Mayerling. His suicide shatters her to the core, and her death-wish becomes overpowering, but now Death rejects her. After ten more years of loneliness of the resigned couple Franz Joseph and Elisabeth, Death takes pity and let the final dance begin.
A nightmare shows the fall of Habsburg, while Death throws the murder of weapon towards Lucheni. The murder at the lakeside promenade of Geneva and the apotheoses of Elisabeth ends up in the climax of a passionate embrace of Death.
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December: Unfinished Song
Introduction to performance
December, a musical in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the birth of the late Kim Gwang-seok, is a jukebox musical with leading roles of a brilliant love story lasted over the past 20 years.
- The only musical to appreciate Kim Gwang-seok’s own songs, songs for singing and unpublished songs!
SYNOPSIS
This winter, a brilliant love to touch your heart!
‘Long time no see, how are you doing..?’
Act 1/ in 1992, a lodging house in Seoul
A romanticist ‘Ji Wook’ who enjoys poem, music, and romance,
he plays the guitar and sings a song at the rooftop of the lodging house to find out ‘Yi Yeon’ at a neighboring rooftop and fall in love at first sight. ‘Ji Wook’ comes to fall in love with her, a student activist and a mysterious girl.
‘Ji Wook”s best friend and the lodging house landlord’s son ‘Hoon’ who loves ‘Yi Yeon’,
‘Yeo Il’ who has loved ‘Ji Wook’ with a single-hearted devotion for a long time,
‘Sung Tae’ who is with ‘Yeo Il’ while dreaming of being an inventor with extraordinary ideas
and ‘Hoon”s father and mother
Their dreams and love encounter crossed fates in pain and farewell of the time and in a death and life situation.
Act 2/ Seoul after 20 years
Hoon, Sung Tae and Yeo Il who had spent most of their twenties with Ji Wook are having a hectic urban life with keeping their dreams and love in mind. However, Ji Wook who became a performance director has still a vivid memory of Yi Yeon. One day, Ji Wook encounters a woman at a subway station filled with commuters and is in shock as if Yi Yeon comes back. Even if her age and name are different, he clearly feels the scent of Yi Yeon. The memories with her revive, and he prepares for a new performance. Ji Wook, Hoon, Sung Tae and a fatefully-appeared woman come across their past secrets…
Source: Interpark
Synopsis from: Elisabeth HP + Sejong Center
Shared by: JYJ3
Filed under: Info/Trans Tagged: December the musical, Elisabeth 2013, Interpark, Junsu
