‘The Flying Carpet’ series: Literary and musical journeys to the islands

Reading: Martina Gedeck
Music: G.P. Telemann ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ (Intrada Suite for 2 violins and others) with Sarah Kilchenmann and Yuka Tsuboi (violins), Julien Kilchenmann (cello), Peter Solomon (harpsichord)

Gulliver’s Travels, the world-famous satirical novel by the Dublin-born writer, Anglican priest and politician Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), was published in 1726.
Swift’s Gulliver is more relevant today than ever: fantasy, political satire and a critique of human stupidity and hubris that is as witty as it is incisive. With his ‘novel of misanthropy’ (J. G. Herder), Swift achieves the feat of thoroughly entertaining his readers.
Part Four, in Christa Schuenke’s translation, is particularly impressive: Gulliver arrives on the island of the rational horses, the Houyhnhnms, who keep humans – the so-called Yahoos – as domestic and working animals. There, he becomes acutely aware of his humanity in a unique way.

Martina Gedeck, one of the most prominent German film actresses of her generation and winner of the German Audiobook Prize, reads from Swift’s classic – what a treat to have Ms Gedeck on the Ticino stage!
The performance is accompanied by chamber music by Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767), a contemporary of Swift’s, including his suite *Gulliver’s Travels*, composed just two years after the novel’s publication. The music will be performed by members of the Galatea Quartet together with Peter Solomon, who previously delighted audiences at the Rigiblick Theatre with Pergolesi’s *Stabat Mater*.

Concept for ‘The Flying Carpet’: Klaus Hemmerle
In collaboration with the Rigiblick Theatre, Zurich