Dell'amore oscuro

In 1935, just a year before his tragic death, Federico García Lorca composed a cycle of sonnets dedicated to his lover, Juan Ramírez de Lucas. These verses, known as the Sonetos del Amor Oscuro [Sonnets of Dark Love], are a visceral explosion of passion and intimacy, possessing a profound lyrical and musical resonance. Their history is shrouded in mystery: kept secret for decades by the family, they only surfaced in 1983 through a pirated edition, instantly becoming a legendary literary touchstone. Today, these searing poems form the beating heart of a transdisciplinary dialogue that drives the artistic inquiry of Zoe-Theater im Forst. Here, the word is transmuted into body, movement and sound – an experience where the sublime meets the carnal, and love manifests as harmony, desire and living matter.

Dell’amore oscuro embraces the complexity of the original material through a creative process that intertwines dramaturgy, music and dance on a single expressive plane. Lorca’s text thus becomes the bedrock for an egalitarian dialogue between disciplines, a vital encounter free from predefined hierarchies. On stage, a live string quartet, an actor and a dancer: six bodies, guided by their respective crafts, interact to evoke the immediacy and urgency of these words. Though written by a man for a man – and for one man alone – the radical nature of these sonnets transcends the specific to become universal, evoking passion and fragility while inviting a profound, shared connection.

“Between how you love me and how I love you / Starry air, the trembling of a plant.”

The performance is in Italian, with German subtitles.