About Christopher Fülling

Stage, opera and ritual theatre director Christopher Fülling is the co-founder and artistic director of the Art Monastery located in a former Franciscan monastery in the medieval hill town of Labro, 70 minutes north east of Rome, Italy. Christopher is a unique character in early music and experimental theatre circles known for creating and directing performance works that explore music, ritual, and physical theatre.  In addition to numerous Art Monastery concerts and theatrical spectacles around Italy, Fülling recently co-created and directed a rock opera inspired by Burning Man, "How to Survive the Apocalypse" at San Francisco's Teatro Zinzanni.

Vocal Practice
For the last 12 years, Christopher has worked as a professional tenor based in Europe. In addition to his career in oratorio, opera, choral and Early Music, Christopher sang and recorded chant with Schola Cantorum Amsterdam and Hartkeriana. A professional chant ensemble, Hartkeriana was formed to put into practice the emerging primary research on the Hartker codexes by preeminent chant scholar, Frater Kees Pouderoijen. This work has been presented at the International Chant festivals in Watou, Belgium and Vác, Hungary.

Christopher has degrees in anthropology from Princeton and Opera Directing and historically informed vocal performance from California Institute of the Arts. He studied voice with Max von Egmond, Peter Kooy, and Eric Mentzel, chant with Prof. Eugeen Liven d'Abelardo, and Medieval music with Benjamin Bagby and Eric Mentzel of Sequentia.

With his Medieval group, Fata Organa, and 17thC Ensemble, Cappella Confluentes, Christopher put chant within its ritual context, reconstructing liturgies from specific time and places, working within creative theatrical contexts. These include collaborations with the German theatre group Grotest Maru and the Dutch Dansgroep Krisztina de Châtel.

As founder of the Art Monastery outside of Rome, he has returned Gregorian chant, the artform, to its roots in monastic daily life. Not only do the Artmonks (a diverse group of international performers and artists from many disciplines) sing compline in the evening, but they have also sung liturgies with the bishops from three Italian dioceses.


Stage and Ritual Work
His work investigates the power of ritual in both traditional and experimental contexts. Works inspired by tradition include liturgical reconstructions of Medieval and Baroque repertoire; for instance, a "Jacobusvesper" in Amsterdam from the Codex Calixtinus with his Medieval/experimental ensemble Fata Organa and the European performance tour and recording of "Easter Vespers at the Royal Polish Chapel ca 1615," with his Baroque orchestra, Cappella Confluentes, featuring modern premieres of the works of Asprilio Pacelli. He has also created highly experimental original works like "Situbanda," a Balinese-inspired neo-traditional theatre piece that toured in Indonesia and evolved into San Francisco's Gamelan X, as well as four giant and bizarre opera rituals at Burning Man, one of which generated a “Liturgy of Atlantis” that played in Amsterdam and Berlin.

He served as music director of several site-specific spectacles for the Berlin-based physical theatre troupe, Grotest Maru (in Duisburg, at the Kyffhaüser monument in Thuringen, and for the OEROL festival on the Dutch island of Terschelling) and the Butoh troupe Ten Pen Chii.  As a “concept creator” he has collaboratively develop performance works for ensembles; for example, “Obscura,” a piece integrating modern dance and Medieval music for Dansgroep Krisztina de Châtel and Cappella Amsterdam, and Long Beach Opera's radical Chicano performance art production of Purcell's "LA Indian Queen" with artist Guillermo Gomez-Peña and choreographer Sarah Shelton Mann.  

In addition to creating and directing stage works, Christopher also performs as a tenor specializing in 17th century repertoire, Gregorian chant, and new works. He has performed and recorded with Gabriel Garrido's Ensemble Elyma, Daniel Reuss' Cappella Amsterdam, and Eugeen Liven d'Abelardo's chant ensemble, Hartkeriana. Oratorio and opera credits in Europe and the US include the Maulwerker's production of John Cages's “Complete Songbooks” at the Bielefeld Opera and the lead in the premiere of Mark Lowenstein's opera "Hearts in Need of Mending" at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

Education
B.A. in Anthropology, Princeton
M.F.A. in voice performance and opera directing at CalArts
Beebe Foundation fellowship to study Baroque singing in Amsterdam with Max van Egmond and Peter Kooy at the Academie voor Oude Muziek