MISATANGO – MASS BY MARTÍN PALMERI
Overall direction: Beat Kunz
Musical direction: Miriam Dorsch, Beat Kunz, Niklas Malluschke, Simon Peter, Urban Rieger
Staging: Serge Honegger
Choreography: Annette De Pover
Lighting: René Fritz
Soprano: Katharina Held
Bandoneon: Wolfgang Weniger
Music: Martín Palmeri, Astor Piazzolla, Bersuit Vergarabat, among others
Arrangements: Misha Kallivroussis, John Langley, Simon Peter, Urban Rieger
Choirs and soloists from Gymnasium Bäumlihof
Orchestra arte frizzante
Big Bäumli Band
Technical crew of Gymnasium Bäumlihof
Martinskirche Basel
Premiere: 23 January 2026
Photos: © Veronika Goepfert
Texts: © Serge Honegger
Together with the participants, we created a staged sequence that only attempted to tell a story in broad strokes. More important were the spatial arcs of tension, the relationships between the group and the individual, and that which must remain unspeakable.
It does not matter whether one approaches a mass with piety or not. What distinguishes its cultural value is its immutable form. It can be filled with tango sounds, expanded with music from other genres, or supplemented with staging and choreographic commentary. Its essential function of being charged with meaning, emotion, or contextual conditions stems from the rigour of its typographical surface.
Precisely because the mass has no depth in principle, it enabled the performers to explore what lies beneath the surface in all its ambivalence and contradictions.
