Barlāms un Jošafats. Buda - kristiešu svētais | Viduslaiku mūzikas ansamblis DIALOGOS

"Barlaam & Josaphat.
Buddha - a Christian saint?"

If we had to choose the hundred most beautiful tales from the history of civilisations, the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat would surely have its place amongst those treasures. This tale, one of the most popular in times past yet almost unknown today, has survived long centuries in numerous versions, languages and translations, and only their mosaic allows for understanding this incredible transcultural phenomenon in which Buddha appears… as a Christian saint.

Katarina Livljanić (leader and founder of the ensemble DIALOGOS) about the program:
"Approaching this story with the idea to transform it into a concert programme, I decided to become another of its vectors, in the style of a storyteller, a performer who conveys a story through the voice. Barlaam and Josaphat struck me as perfect emissaries between the past and the world of today: they bear witness to the multilingual Babel and the plethora of traditions that created them. What could be closer to the man of today than this multiculturality and polyglossia? It is for this reason that the most natural way of passing on this story today seemed to me to be the creation of a performance in several languages. I decided to read the legend in seven ancient translations (Greek, Latin, Old Slavonic-Russian, Old Croatian, Old French, medieval Occitan and Italian), and chose excerpts in each one, in order to create a unifying thread through this "plurilingual" narration. Thus was born our story of Barlaam and Josaphat told in music, where these saints change from one episode to the next and from one language to another, as they have done for centuries."

Ensemble Dialogos:
Katarina Livljanić, voice, direction
Albrecht Maurer, fiddle, rebec
Norbert Rodenkirchen, flutes, harp
Staging: Yoshi Oida
Video: Tom Schenk

Ensemble Dialogos is supported by DRAC Île-de-France – Ministère de la culture and Mécénat Musical Société Générale. This programme was created at the MNAAG Musée des arts asiatiques – Guimet