Those going in search of the philosophical roots of the worldwide climate anxiety will sooner or later end up in the eighteenth century. A thinker such as Rousseau is not just the patron saint of social criticism and romanticism, but also of contemporary environmental movements. The new kind of awareness of nature that arrived at the end of the baroque period was also documented in Georg Friedrich Handel’s Neun deutsche Arien. In this intimate song cycle, Handel used the poetry of the early romantic Barthold Heinrich Brockes. He wrote with great passion of the moving beauty of nature. The Belgian baroque ensemble B’Rock and soprano Ilse Eerens juxtapose the Neun deutsche Arien with brief compositions for baroque ensemble by the Antwerp composer Wim Henderickx. The Chinese theatre director Shuang Zou and Muziektheater Transparant provide the stage concept for this production.
