Events

With the founding of WALPURGIS in 1987, singer and music theatre maker Judith Vindevogel wanted to be able to develop not only as a performer but also as a creative artist. The need to be able to colour outside the rigid lines of classical opera and musical was great. Inspired by her collaboration with Leporello and Maatschappij Discordia (NL), Vindevogel wanted to be able to experiment freely with new forms of music theatre and more horizontal ways of working together.

In the early 1990s, thanks to the networking talents of co-founder Lukas Pairon, WALPURGIS gained more and more fame outside the country as a Flemish pioneer of contemporary music theatre.

With the establishment of its own music theatre workshop in 1998, the organisation of the annual FENIKS FESTIVAL and the associated residencies and workshops, the perfect breeding ground was created for an ever-growing, diverse and dynamic music theatre community comprising singers, actors, musicians, dancers, visual artists, composers and writers. In early 2000, Stef Depover came on board to further enrich the artistic output as in-house set designer, drawing on his imagination and technical skills.

In 2010, *Haven 010* marked the start of a new era in which there was an increasing focus on finding ways to involve the public – and, in particular, more vulnerable groups – as fellow travellers during the creative process. A fine example of this was the shared reading project and the subsequent trip to Marstal for the Danish premiere of *Wij, de verdronkenen* (2019). Thus, slowly but surely, WALPURGIS’s holistic approach came to reflect more and more the society it envisaged: generous, sustainable, constantly evolving, and unafraid of contradictions and extremes.

Over the past 35 years, WALPURGIS has developed, created and presented contemporary music theatre that amazes, stimulates the imagination, moves and provokes thought: from large-scale site-specific performances, intimate fairy-tale operas, libretto readings to experimental music theatre. Some projects also had a second life outside the performing arts as CD, audiobook, animation film, expo, podcast or essay collection.

High-profile musical theatre performances included:

Mignon #1 (1989), first WALPURGIS creation

The Soluble Fish (1994)

Charms (1997)

The Slope of the Old Wives / La Colline des Vieilles Dames (2002-2003)

Les Noces/Svadebka/The Wedding (2005-2013)

Café Bohème (2013-2014)

Princess Turandot / Princesse Turandot (2011-2014)

Fidelio (2015-2020)

Libretto lecture #12: Silla revisited (2017)

Three Strong Women / Trois Femmes Fortes (2018-2024)

We, the Drowned / We, the drowned / Vi, the drowned (2019-2021)

That silly Jan (2021-2022)

In the autumn of 2021, Judith Vindevogel outlined the new policy guidelines for an artist-run organisation focusing on functional development and paying attention to non-human life. This was an important preparatory step in the transformation of WALPURGIS into Rif, and in establishing Rif as Belgium’s first Zoöp.