The Machaut Project

Designed to tour for Chanticleer, 2027 and beyond

The world premiere of THE MACHAUT PROJECT: DEVOTION AND DESIRE offers an immersive, visually striking journey into the richly textured medieval world of Guillaume de Machaut.

A composer, poet, and master of self-invention, Machaut stood at the threshold of modern music, shaping sound into something enduring. In this staging, Chanticleer and Pulitzer draw audiences into a realm of devotion and desire, where courtly love becomes a meditation on the human heart. Love, Faith, and Hope emerge not as abstractions but as vivid, living forces. Through elegant restraint and ritualized gesture, the singers reveal both the beauty of medieval courtship and the vulnerability beneath it—the universal longing to be seen, understood, and loved without disguise.

“Who would have thought that the splendidly artful music of the 14th century could be so humane and accessible?”

-SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE

“Director Elkhanah Pulitzer, whose credits include John Adams’s Antony and Cleopatra and David Lang’s prisoner of the state, promptly set the singers in motion, choreographed by Miguel Alejando Castillo Le Maitre. Circling the playing space, splitting off into separate groups of four, and seated on opposite benches, as church choristers do in facing stalls, the singers made the impassioned melodies, shifting harmonies, and energizing flow of Machaut’s sacred music feel deeply embodied —a liturgy made manifest.”

-MUSICAL AMERICA

Guillame de Machaut, composer
Elkhanah Pulitzer, director
Tim Keeler, music director & countertenor
Miguel Alejandro Castillo Le Maitre, choreographer
Yuki Izumihara, sets/productions
Molly Irelan, costumes
Ortiz Herrera, lights
Anthony Rivera, stage manager

Tavian Cox,
Logan Shields,
Gerrod Pagenkopf,
Luke Elmer,
Cortez Mitchell,
Adam Brett Ward,
Bradley Sharpe,
countertenor

Vineel Garisa Mahal,
Matthew Mazzola,
Andrew Van Allsburg
tenor

Andy Berry,
Jared Gravely,
Matthew Knickman
baritone and bass

Director’s Note by Elkhanah Pulitzer

We enter through Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame, a ritual that invites us to consider our place within the vastness of the universe and our connection to community. Once begun, we journey inward—to the intimate landscape of the human heart. Machaut’s poetry gives name to the forces that move through us—love, memory, desire, honor, hope—and his chansons and lais trace the cycles of love: the first awakening of desire, the ache of longing, the power of the gaze, and the grief of loss. Though born from a medieval imagination, these remain evergreen human experiences. We still find ourselves caught up with the same beautiful, bewildering questions: Who do we love? Who truly sees us? What do we become through loving another?

As the journey unfolds, loss becomes a form of knowledge. The beloved may be lost, but something deeper is discovered: a self made more vulnerable, more open, and more capable of love. The shadow of mortality, so deeply woven into daily life, art and imagination of Machaut’s world, is never far away; neither is the possibility of renewal. When we return to the Mass, we return not quite as we were. We have traveled through the private mysteries of desire and grief and come back into community, carrying both darkness and light with us. Perhaps this is where Hope lives—not in escaping the human condition, but in learning to meet it together.

The Machaut Project

Designed to tour for Chanticleer, 2027 and beyond

Director’s Note by Elkhanah Pulitzer

Other Productions

Hildegard

Antony & Cleopatra

Wozzeck

Proving Up

Julius Caesar

FRAGMENTS

Birds in the Moon

12 Little Spells Tour