CAUTION: This video contains sequences of flashing lights which may affect viewers with epilepsy and other conditions sensitive to light. This performance is an excerpt from the Juilliard program “The Mad King”, which can be viewed in full here: https://www.juilliard.live/videos/the-mad-king

This program is offered in collaboration with Carnegie Hall’s festival “Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice”. Davies’ “Eight Songs for a Mad King”, first performed in 1969, serves as one of the landmarks of late 20th-century British music, thanks to Davies’ brilliant intensification of the implicit theatricality of both the song cycle and cabaret. 

With Juilliard Drama and music alumni, direction by faculty member Mary Birnbaum, and a dynamic set born out of new technologies designed with Juilliard’s Center for Innovation in the Arts, The Mad King weaves together Juilliard’s diverse resources in a program unlike anything seen before.

PETER MAXWELL DAVIES
Eight Songs for a Mad King 
The Sentry
The Country Walk 
The Lady-in-Waiting 
To Be Sung on the Water 
The Phantom Queen 
The Counterfeit Country Dance 
The Review 
Leo Radosavljevic*, Baritone 
Blaire Kim, Violin 
Elisabeth Chang, Cello 
Nikka Gershman, Flute/Piccolo 
Taig Egan, Clarinet 
Stella Perlic*, Percussion/Dulcimer 
Antoinette Cheng, Piano/Harpsichord 

* Juilliard alum

Directed by Mary Birnbaum 

Part of Carnegie Hall’s festival Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice 

Performed and recorded on March 26, 2024 at the Rosemary and Meredith Willson Theater