FINE / DEATH SPEAKS: Between an Ending and a Continuation. David Lang at the Melos-Étos Festival 202
What does it mean to be fine at the moment when one comes face to face with one’s own limits? And can we speak of peace at all when exhaustion, pain and the awareness of mortality make themselves heard? The project FINE / DEATH SPEAKS brings an interdisciplinary music and performance work to the Melos-Étos Festival 2026, in which contemporary music, the female voice, movement and visual art converge in a personal reflection on the fragility of human life and the possibility of renewal. Peter Mazalán and Eva Slobodník Šušková collaborate on the stage concept, musical dramaturgy and performative form of the production. They are joined on stage by violinist David Danel, guitarist Miloš Slobodník and pianist Fero Király. The visual component is created by Jakub Pišek, with technical realisation by Milan Slama.
On Thursday, 5 November 2026, at 7:00 pm, the project FINE / DEATH SPEAKS will be presented at the Basement of the New Market Hall (Suterén Novej tržnice). Its central musical axis is Death Speaks (2012) by American composer David Lang. A leading figure in contemporary American music, Pulitzer Prize winner and co-founder of the Bang on a Can collective, Lang creates a distinctive dialogue with the themes of death and transience in this work. He draws on textual motifs from Franz Schubert’s songs, in which Death does not appear as an abstract threat, but as a personified, intimate presence addressing the human being directly.
Lang deconstructs the original texts and transforms them into a minimalist chamber work for voice, violin, electric guitar and piano. The music oscillates between meditative repetition, a fragile song structure and sonic austerity. It avoids operatic pathos and Romantic dramatization, instead offering a space for attentive listening and an immediate encounter with one’s own mortality.
However, the FINE project goes beyond the boundaries of musical interpretation. Through performance, it explores the inner image of the human being and the body pushed to the extreme limits of its physical capacities – as a site of exhaustion and resistance, but also of inner strength and salvation. At the heart of the production is the story of a real-life opera singer. Her body and voice become a space where artistic identity meets physical experience, vulnerability encounters determination, and the loss of strength gives way to the possibility of finding it again.
A special place in the dramaturgy is given to an unfinished Verdi prayer at the opening of the performance. Its presence opens up the stage space and creates a conceptual counterpoint to Lang’s contemporary composition. Two distinct musical worlds meet here, connected by questions of human mortality, faith and the search for meaning in situations where words are no longer enough.
Despite its dark starting points, FINE is not a project about hopelessness. Its title carries a double meaning in Italian and English: fine as an ending, and fine as a state in which everything is all right. It is precisely within this tension that the central message of the production emerges. The statement “I am fine” is neither self-evident nor an empty phrase here, but a fragile, consciously made decision to carry on. Not by denying pain or mortality, but by embracing life despite them.
The musical material of Lang’s composition is expanded in the production through performative sequences that work with its isolated motifs, rhythmic patterns and harmonic textures. These create a space for movement and visual imagery, further developing the themes embedded in the work. Music, voice, body and image thus form a shared stage language in which the inner states of the human being become visible and audible.
Ultimately, FINE / DEATH SPEAKS is not merely a meditation on death. It is a statement about the possibility of renewal, the strength to carry on and a quiet affirmation of life despite the awareness of its finitude. It is about the moment when an “ending” need not mean a definitive cessation, but can become the beginning of a different way of perceiving oneself and the world.
Melos-Étos 2026 | FINE / DEATH SPEAKS
Thursday, 5 November 2026, at 7:00 pm
Basement of the New Market Hall (Suterén Novej tržnice)
Creative Team:
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Peter Mazalán – stage concept, vocals, performance
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Eva Slobodník Šušková – musical concept, vocals, performance
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David Danel – violin, performance
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Miloš Slobodník – electric guitar, performance
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Fero Király – piano, performance
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Jakub Pišek – video projections
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Milan Slama – technical realisation