FINE / DEATH SPEAKS is an intermedia music and performance project centred on the composition *Death Speaks* (2012) by the American post-minimalist composer David Lang. The work draws on textual motifs from Schubert’s songs, in which the figure of Death is not an abstract terror but a personified, intimate entity that speaks to the individual. Lang deconstructs the song texts and recasts them in a minimalist chamber form, thereby creating a strangely quiet, unemotional and direct dialogue with transience.
Lang’s score for voice, violin, electric guitar and piano oscillates between meditative repetition, a delicate song-like structure and an uncompromising sonic austerity that eschews traditional operatic pathos.
FINE analyses a person’s inner image whilst also exploring their body at the extremes of its physical capabilities – the body as a place of exhaustion and resistance, but also of inner strength and salvation. Despite its sombre starting point, the project opens up space for hope. The word ‘FINE’ takes on its familiar English and Italian meanings within it. ‘I’m fine’ is not spoken here as a matter of course or a cliché, but as a fragile, consciously articulated decision to carry on and not to perceive ‘FINE’ as ‘the end’.
All this unfolds in the story of a real-life opera singer, in which, amidst the tension between exhaustion and inner energy, the possibility of renewal and a quiet acceptance of life – despite its finitude – begins to emerge. The performance opens with Verdi’s unfinished prayer…
Tickets are available in advance via the Ticketportal network:
https://www.ticketportal.sk/event/Melos-Etos-2026
or one hour before the concert at the venue.
Programme:
Lang, David: death speaks
Performers:
Mazalán, Peter (stage concept, vocals, performance)
Slobodník Šušková, Eva (musical concept, vocals, performance)
Danel, David (violin, performance)
Slobodník, Miloš (electric guitar, performance)
Király, Fero (piano, performance)
Pišek, Jakub (video projections)
Slama, Milan (technical implementation)
