The Ghost Sonata | August Strindberg, 1907

Ghost Sonata – Director: Greg Eldridge, Opera Australia, 2019

“Student: A Sunday child, you said – I was born on a Sunday, or so they say…
Old Man: No! Were you…? I almost knew… it was the colour of your eyes… but in that case you can see what others can’t, have you noticed?
Student: I don’t know what other people can or can’t see, but sometimes… well, one doesn’t talk about things like that !”

“Here come the guests. Keep calm, now, and we’ll go on playing our old roles.”

“I have no idea what I’m to become.”

“I know the world would collapse completely if people were completely candid.”

The Ghost Sonata – Director: John Preston, Tower Theatre, Canonbury, 1962

Ingmar Bergman, Spöksonaten, 1973

“Old Man: My whole life’s like a book of fairy stories, sir. And although the stories are different, they are held together by one thread, and the main theme constantly recurs.”

“I prefer silence, then you can hear thoughts and see the past; silence cannot conceal anything… unlike words.”

“Everything she touches loses its savor. It’s as if she sucked with her eyes. We get the grounds when she has drunk the coffee. She drinks the wine and fills the bottles up with water.”

“Crime and secrets hold us–guilt binds us together. We have broken our bonds and gone our own ways, too many times, but we are always drawn together again.”

“There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.”

The Ghost Sonata – Dir. John R. Briggs, Plymouth State University, 2005

“And you, you beautiful, unhappy, innocent creature who bear no blame for your suffering, sleep, sleep without dreams, and when you awake again… may you be greeting by a sun that does not burn, in a house without dust, by friends without faults, by a love without flaw.”

“They look like ghosts. And they’ve kept this up for twenty years, always the same people saying the same things or saying nothing at all for fear of being found out.”

“Because they have nothing to say to each other, because neither believes what the other says. I’ve heard my father say, “What’s the point of talking, when neither of us can fool the other?” This part made me laugh.”

The Ghost Sonata – Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1941

Ghost Sonata – Director: Greg Eldridge, Opera Australia, 2019

“When people refuse to speak out for too long, it’s like water that’s stagnant and starts to rot!”

“In silence you can’t hide anything … as you can in words.”

“Student: My father ended up in a madhouse…
Young Lady: Was he ill?
Student: No, he was quite well, just mad!
One day though, he gave a big party— Well, at table he called for silence and raised his glass to make a speech… Then the safety-catch slipped and he spoke on and on, stripping the whole company bare, one after another, telling each and every one of them just how false they were. Then he sat down exhausted in the middle of the table, and told them all to go to hell!”

“It is in asylums that people say everything they think.”

“Snowflakes must be falling stars.”

August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata1907
a play in three acts