It’s always a pleasure to spend time in the company of Stef Aerts and Marie Vinck, two members of the theatre collective FC Bergman, but when that happens at a table set with bouillabaisse, Caesar salad and vol-au-vent, it’s just that little bit more enjoyable. At the end of lunch, we realise that we’ve been sitting beneath a large black-and-white photograph of the Scheldt the whole time. The photo shows a jetty in the river. ‘I know that spot well,’ says Marie Vinck. ‘I had to shoot a scene there for the film De Kus.’

What does the Scheldt mean to them as residents of Antwerp? ‘Well, it’s mainly a romantic spot,’ says Stef Aerts. ‘Where you see young couples sitting in the summer, where you take your first love. For Marie and me, it’s mainly a place where we like to go for walks with our daughter. It’s also where our first site-specific projects came about, at Scheld’apen and at Petroleum Zuid.’

In Peter Benoit’s (1834–1901) oratorio De Schelde (1869), too, a lustful young man tries to woo a somewhat melancholic girl, amidst hymns to fishing and industry. But Klauwaerts and Leliaerts (from the Battle of the Golden Spurs) and even the spirit of William of Orange also appear in Emanuel Hiel’s text. The work premiered in 1869 at the Bourla Theatre, then still known as the French Theatre. The opera house and the Vlaamse Schouwburg on the Kipdorpbrug did not yet exist. Nevertheless, De Schelde, together with Lucifer, marked the major breakthrough for Benoit’s Dutch-language oratorios.

Benoit composed Lucifer in 1866, also to a text by Emanuel Hiel, when, in his early thirties, he had just returned from Paris, where he had conducted Jacques Offenbach’s operettas at the Théâtre des Bouffes. The work enjoyed reasonable international success at the time and was intended to form the first part of a trilogy that would ultimately never materialise. In the oratorio, which has no connection to Vondel’s Lucifer, the eternal struggle between light and darkness is set to music.

Where did the idea to focus on Peter Benoit come from?

STEF AERTS We received our theatre training at the Conservatoire in Antwerp. As you walk up the steps of DE SINGEL, the first thing you come across is an impressive bust of Peter Benoit. Although he was the founder of the Conservatoire, we were never told anything about him during our training. Perhaps in the music department, but not in the theatre programme. So it was always an enigmatic statue. Then you notice that there are statues of this man elsewhere in the city too. How many Antwerp residents would know that there’s a statue of him on De Wapper, across from the Rubens House?

MARIE VINCK There’s also a monument in the Harmoniepark, designed by Henry van de Velde, which stood in front of the Antwerp Opera House for many years. (The titles of his six greatest works are carved into that monument, with Lucifer and De Schelde at the forefront, ed.) It’s a fountain that was popularly known as ‘the swimming pool’ because drunks were always stumbling into it and a car even ended up in it once. You then learn that he was one of the founding fathers of the Flemish Opera and fought for culture in the mother tongue, at a time when that was by no means a given and in a country that had only just come into being. In short, we’ve been curious about this man for some time. Later, we discovered that he is a figurehead of the Flemish Movement and was co-opted by dubious circles. When we took our idea to Jan Vandenhouwe, he reacted with surprise. Amusement, too.

STEF Musically, we found it strangely compelling. You hear that grand romantic music reminiscent of Wagner, and yet De Schelde certainly has something innocent about it too. And I mean that in the most positive sense. It has a schlager-like quality, as if it were a collection of songs of life: touching and naïve, yet sensitive and profound. De Schelde contrasts with Lucifer, which is dark and eerie. It really has the power of a requiem. Both works have moved us in many ways.

MARIE The fact that it’s sung in Dutch has a direct effect on the heart and soul. It hits very close to home.

STEF And we have fond memories of collaborating with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen during Les Pêcheurs de perles. We look forward to working with OBV’s fantastic chorus and orchestra once again.

‘In Lucifer, the devil literally intends to corrupt humanity, and in De Schelde he gets away with it – even though he doesn’t appear as a character’

Lucifer by Benoit and Hiel is more coherent than De Schelde.

STEF Lucifer is, of course, the struggle between the ultimate good and the ultimate evil. The two works are fascinating because they contrast sharply yet complement one another. De Schelde follows fairly soon after Lucifer, but the tone is completely different. In Lucifer, the fallen and betrayed angel rises one last time to turn humanity against God. He seeks to stir up ambition in people and incite them to exploit the elements of the earth. God’s creation must be used for personal gain. De Schelde, on the other hand, is a naïve ode to progress, internationalisation and trade.

MARIE At that time, the Scheldt had only just been freed from tolls, and not long after that, it would be straightened to accommodate, among other things, the large ships from the Congo Free State. In those years, Antwerp was not only bursting at the seams economically, but it was also a fascinating period in the arts and architecture.

STEF The oratorio is written from a genuine sense of optimism about progress: more industry, more fishing, more international trade, more, more, more… Today we know where that led.

That sounds Faustian.

STEF Exactly. In Lucifer, the devil literally intends to corrupt humanity, and in De Schelde he gets away with it – even though he doesn’t appear as a character.

The theme of humanity struggling against greater forces recurs frequently in your work. Is that present here too?

MARIE Now that you mention it, that does seem to be the case, actually. It’s apparently the story we keep retelling. But the way we tell it is different each time, and each time it reveals something different about what it means to be human. In that respect, these two oratorios are incredibly inspiring.