The Little Match Girl

An impoverished little girl, trying to sell her wares in the freezing cold amidst general indifference, lights matches one by one in an attempt to warm herself, and with each one she finds joy in her imaginings. One of her last few matches brings her a vision of her grandmother, who always treated her with love and kindness…

Dying of hunger or cold, even in a country such as France, is still a reality today. Faced with such persistent injustices, we are left with a question: what light can we still turn to for warmth?

In a close musical embrace between David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion and Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur’s Le Cantique des Cantiques (a setting of the biblical Song of Solomon), Aedes brings together two different paths to redemption, both traversed by light and darkness. On the one hand, the poverty caused by the lack of love in this earthly world; on the other, the passion and warmth of lovers drawn to each other.

Two very different paths, but each one aspiring to find a warming, comforting, healing presence. Love becomes both light and a power of transfiguration. In paying tribute to this little girl and everything she embodies, Aedes explores the fragile pathways that enable human beings to continue, despite everything, to hope and to bring forth beauty from the very depths of misery.