Letters to a young poet

Photograph: Verdala Palace by Julian Vassallo Artists: Bill Barclay, David Joseph, Carducci String Quartet.

Created and directed by Bill Barclay, Concert Theatre Works

Text by Rainer Maria Rilke & Franz Xavier Kappus

Translated by Damion Searls

Music by Ravel & Debussy Synopsis

A theatrical chamber music production. Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous letters to aspiring poet Franz Kappus are a clarion call to artists everywhere. Maurice Ravel’s single, masterful string quartet was written in the same year, in the same city, and at the same moment in his life. As if that weren’t enough, the lost letters of ‘the young poet,’ Franz Kappus, were discovered in a groundbreaking literary discovery in 2020, allowing us to read this famous correspondence for the first time. Rounding out these mirrored mentors is Debussy’s single string quartet, mirroring Ravel’s in the way that Rilke mirrors the young poet. In a new groundbreaking work of concert-theatre, Bill Barclay…