The opera is based on the tale of an unknown young girl, whose lifeless body was found in the River Seine in Paris, close to the Louvre, around 1880. With no signs of violence on her body, it was concluded that she had committed suicide.

One of the pathologists at the morgue was so affected by her beauty, however, that he cast a plaster death mask of her face. Her identity was never discovered, but her image became as famous as that of the Mona Lisa. In L’Inconnue de la Seine, the girl wakes up, dives back into the water and attempts to discover exactly what happened to her that night in the Seine. Why did she have to die, and why does this question keep haunting us? And how does it feel to die without a name or a story?

Artists

FREDERIK NEYRINCK
L’Inconnue de la Seine

ASKO|SCHÖNBERG
conductor Joey Marijs
soprano Lieselot De Wilde
libretto Sabryna Pierre
direction Nathalie Teirlinck