Development and partnerships

Identify partners for the workshop and submit funding applications to FONDATION SUISA, Landis & Gyr, Pro Helvetia and the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

An intensive period of composition, chamber orchestration and electronic sound development, aiming to deliver a workshop-ready score and playback materials by the end of June.

A research trip to Paris will connect score work with the theatrical history of the piece. The enquiry centres on the representation of divine influence in Cocteau’s 1922 premiere of the play and the Paris opera production of 1943, and how those approaches can inform the new electronic vocabulary and scenic approach.

Research priorities include manuscript comparison, the rhythm and ambiguity of the French text, and production imagery. The Bibliotheque nationale de France’s manuscript orchestral score by Honegger, and the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris’s Cocteau materials offer specific starting points. Visits and access remain to be arranged.

BnF manuscript score · BHVP Antigone dossier

Develop the staging and technical setup, assemble the artistic team and cast, and prepare performance materials and rehearsals.

Present the work in a workshop production with the participating partners.

The workshop is conceived for live singers with a prerecorded electronic and instrumental realisation, allowing the music, vocal writing and dramatic pacing to be explored ahead of the live chamber-ensemble production. Its scope and degree of staging will be developed with the participating partners. Audio and video documentation, including clean vocal recordings for mixing with the electronic score, will support subsequent partner approaches, subject to performer consent and rights permissions.

An accompanying discussion with a specialist in Greek tragedy could connect the performance with the work’s questions of authority, conscience and divine influence.