Borealis 2026 closes with a world premiere from masters of sharp-witted humour, linguistic curiosity, and unconventional stage storytelling: Spreafico Eckly and Matteo Fargion — Franz (Purgatorio XXVII–XXXIII).
This performance places us in a familiar yet uncanny setting: a group of artists facing a task and leaning on artificial intelligence for guidance. We step into a liminal-setting — a brainstorming session about a performance within the performance itself — in which the artists try to find their new opera's central theme.
Blending folk song, familiar classical music quotes, and parlato (an expressive speech delivery hovering between speaking and singing), Franz sits between philosophy, drama, and opera, in which exchanges of perspectives become performance; storytelling merges with process; and the spectacle we are witnessing on stage turns unexpectedly messy, human, and profound.
In this performance, Spreafico Eckly and Matteo Fargion explore how language behaves, how stories twist, and how humans use words to make sense of what resists sense.
Read more about the performance at https://www.borealisfestival.no/