All 18 gloomy: Melancholia is concert for sour old men #HF16

We are all going to die! We already have that certainty in. And since the dawn of mankind, every new generation invariably knows that it is going to happen to them now. After all: their successors have never prospered anywhere like today's youth. Nice premise for a concert, thought German director Sebastian Nübling[hints]Nuling was a guest at the Holland Festival last year with an adaptation of Hebbel's play Nibelungen, read the review and a interview.[/hints], good idea to programme, thought the Holland Festival. I seriously wonder why.

First of all, an opportunity to hear the music of Monteverdi and his Baroque contemporaries performed live, with a performer like countertenor Tim Mead, should be grasped with both hands. The man sings divinely. No one can take anything away from that, except the director who makes him shut up for half an evening. Then we have the La Cetra Barockorchester Basel, which beautifully revives the sound of the Baroque era on largely original, or recreated, instruments. So far, music lovers have a top evening.

But then.

Because director Nübling believed that the Baroque era, with its built-in melancholy, provided a much richer repertoire of human contact than the present, with its mobile phones and eternal obligation to communicate, he put in, opposite the beautiful music, about 20 'young people'. In inverted commas, because these are cliché youngsters. Youngsters by the book. Armed with mobile phones. Moving jerkily. Staring blankly ahead, hanging around bored, insensitive to the emotions of adults and concerned only with their own appearance.

Choreographer Ives Thuwis and director Sebastian Nübling then failed to turn the fact that young people are up to no good into an ascending dramatic line. The performance remains stuck in a fixed rhythm of solo, group comes on, moves something, orchestra comes on, plays something, everyone goes off, someone remains, solo, group comes on, moves something, orchestra comes on, and then for 18 times.

An attempt at Alain Platel?

The movements are predictable, borrowing in cramped madness from Alain Platel, but without the enthusiasm of that grand master of sentiment. But so with those grumpy faces of everyone on stage, and without a single moment of mutual contact, not within the absent narrative, but also not between performing musicians and youngsters, except - necessarily - at the final applause.

Star of the evening, Tim Mead, is put in a corner by the direction after a couple of wonderful songs, where he will first be diligently busy writing something on a piece of paper on the wall, and then looking at it silently for a very long time, until an adolescent makes fun of it - of course, what else are those pussy kids on earth for, you hear the direction say -. Doomed as they are.

Then they walk around a few more times and go off, without anyone having caught on to anything other than that baroque music is beautiful and young people are stupid. What we did get is eighteen times the grumpiness, gloom and, above all, the boundless boredom of the kids on stage. And mind you: they can't help it. It is not their fault that they are exploited in this way.

What these grumpy performance in the Holland Festival programme is beyond me. There are - as far as not being cut out - many choreographers and directors who are much better placed to show talent and inspiration from the upcoming generation. A generation, which will undoubtedly do better than the current one, as has been the case since the dawn of mankind.