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Blind Marie saw the disaster coming: The new production of "The Matterhorn Story" on the Riffelberg puts the women at the center. They warn their husbands about the first ascent - and are proved right.
Keystone
"The Matterhorn Story" celebrates its premiere on the open-air stage on the Riffelberg above Zermatt on Friday. 160 years after the first ascent of the Matterhorn, author Livia Anne Richard has restaged the play - and placed warning women at the center.
The first ascent of the Matterhorn ended tragically: on July 13, 1865, a rope team set off from Zermatt, made up of seven men who could hardly have been more different - English gentlemen around the alpinist Edward Whymper, led by father and son Taugwalder from Zermatt, two mountain farmers.
The social differences were immense, they did not understand each other linguistically; in addition, the action was rushed because they wanted to get ahead of a rope team that was ascending from the Italian side. The men wanted to be the first.
The women saw the impending disaster. Zermatt in the 19th century was a village somewhere in the mountains, farmers who struggled to make ends meet, at the mercy of nature, in the shadow of a mountain that stood for the power of nature - and which they would never dare to conquer on their own. But that was exactly what the noble English gentlemen wanted.
It is this perspective that author and director Livia Anne Richard adopts for her new production of "The Matterhorn Story". "I was interested in the all-pervasive superstition and the warning women," she says in an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency. That's why she strengthened the female characters and introduced an almost "mythical figure" in the form of blind Marie. "Mythical" also because the blind seer has been a strong motif in literature since antiquity. Now, in Richard, the male warner becomes the female warner, the blind seer.
This is the new twist that Richard gives her story compared to ten years ago. She first brought "The Matterhorn Story" to the stage on the Riffelberg on the 150th anniversary of the first ascent of the Matterhorn. Back then, her aim was to rehabilitate the Taugwalders, especially Father Taugwalder. She has basically retained this aspect, but has allowed it to fade into the background.
Now, for the 160th anniversary, Richard has been approached again by Destination Zermatt. "I don't really like staging the same play twice," she says. But she accepted anyway because the new production gave her the opportunity to "review her old play".
The result was not only a shift in content, the director also changed the presentation on stage. She repeatedly has the actors go into a so-called "freeze"; dialogues or small scenes are emphasized in this way, says Richard. This type of presentation is reminiscent of the effect of the zoom in a film.
The cinematic component is reinforced by the music. Bernese pianist Elia Gasser improvises live every evening and "always captures the respective moods anew with his music", says Richard.
On July 14, 1865, the rope team from Zermatt was actually the first to reach the summit of the Matterhorn. However, four of the seven men fell on the descent. Whymper survived. He made sure that he went down in history as the first person to climb the Matterhorn. And he accused father Taugwalder of murder. He also survived. But despite being acquitted in court, he was shattered by the serious accusation. Lord Francis Douglas did not survive. His body still lies somewhere on the mountain. The women in the village and blind Marie had a hunch that disaster was bound to happen.
www.freilichtspielezermatt.ch
27.06.2025, 12:00
