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| 1 | Salomé | | Salomé is the third and last episode of the trilogy Opera Serie: musical performances created from freely re-adapted, celebrated opera libretto texts (Orpheus-Othello-Salomé). For each of the three episodes the musical composition is completely original. The performance is thought out for a performer and a musician. (In Salomé's case: a singer and her pianist.) With the singer Evelinn Trouble playing Salomé, this episode focuses on the character's madness. As established in the beginning of the research for all three episodes, there is a desire to avoid a standard frontal relationship with the public (public sitting on risers, and actors on stage.) The esthetic choice is close to that of German expressionism in the twenties, and we are brought inside an old cabaret (or what remains of one.) The formal structure of the piece is a flashback in time, everything has already happened: Salome's repugnance for King Herod, her meeting with Iokanaan, the dance of the seven veils, the murder of the prophet, and the madness of Salomé kissing the decapitated head. Salomé comes on stage, covered in blood, telling us her memories. As the piece will be mainly musical, and as is the case at the opera, it is not easy to follow or understand the sung text. So this flashback serves as a résumé of the story in a sort of spoken/sung delirium, and allow us to avoid super-titles and text handouts at the entry. From here on the public can relax and enjoy the emotional aspect of the song and music. | Christian Garcia-Gaucher | Performance | Black Box, Moving Audience | 50 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Christian Garcia-Gaucher | | | | | Christian Garcia-Gaucher | Sven Kreter | Marion Montel | Sébastian Grosset | | | | | | 13-Jun-2014 | Switzerland | Lausanne | Théâtre Arsenic-Lausanne | 250 | City of Lausanne | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Performance |
| 2 | Othello | | Othello is the second episode of the trilogy Opera Serie: a series of three musical performances created from freely re-adapted, and celebrated opera libretto texts (Orpheus-Othello-Salomé). For each of the three episodes the musical composition is completely original. Always following the principal of three episodes, the performance is thought out for a performer and a musician. For Othello, the musician is hidden behind curtains and only the performer is visible to the public. The choice to avoid a standard frontal relationship with the public (public sitting on risers, and actors on stage) became evident little by little during the creation process. So for each episode the spatial concept, and the public and actors whereabouts are questioned. Here, the whole evolution of the piece takes place on a tiny stage measuring one meter by two, as if from the beginning Othello was imprisoned, confined to his emotions, his complexes, his origins. It is constructed like a living painting, with the help of video projections, which evolve in a very slow and progressive manner. Othello will traverse all the sensations described by Shakespeare: his great love for Desdemona, his doubts and his hardships, his despair and then murder and suicide. He will do this with spoken/sung text, producing sounds with his mouth, his body his attitude, and his expressions. The musical composition, partly electronic partly acoustic accentuates Othello's emotions, starting very softly and developing to a very strong climax which accompanies the manipulation of Iago and the murder of Desdemona. Othello's suicide, however, will be symbolized by a change in skin colour. | Christian Garcia-Gaucher | Performance | Black Box | 50 | | | 0 | 1-10 | Christian Garcia-Gaucher | | | | | Christian Garcia-Gaucher | Sven Kreter | Marion Montel | Sébastian Grosset | | | | | | 22-Mar-2014 | Switzerland | Lausanne | Théâtre Arsenic-Lausanne | 250 | City of Lausanne | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Performance |
| 3 | The Generator | | An audio-visual symphony: "The staging of a delirium from its breaking through till a total contamination of a young man’s reality" For two screens, clarinet and cello. Concept: I like to experiment with the psychology of perception. Basing my idea on the grounding that our mind creates an experience by adding several layers of information, I thought about how to stretch our experience of a movie, a concert, a story. In my project, the several layers are faced separately, so first the music, then a theatrical and unfinished version of the story, then a full movie with its entire content. In this way, each stage of the story needs to be overlapped in the mind of the spectator, in order to reach its full expression. The two musicians (clarinet and cello) play live in the first part of the performance. Behind them, there are two screens on which appear extracts from the movie, without sound. The second and third parts, echoing the first section both in the music and in the structure; gradually reveal the mysteries of the first part of the concert with the video growing into a film with all its specific attributes as: dialogue, dynamic scenes, etc... The story is inspired by the novel "Flight into darkness" by Arthur Schnitzler Plot: Thomas is back in town after a long vacation spent in Italy to sooth his nerves. Over the course of a night, things develop tragically for both Thomas and his brother Otto, a renowned neurologist. Horrified by the story of his dear friend Hoenburg going insane, Thomas asks Otto to put an end to his life if he should ever show signs of a mental disorder. Unable to be taken seriously by his friends and acquaintances, Thomas obsesses about people’s reactions to him. His deranged mind starts to build a thick web of obsessions and misinterpretations of reality, the consequences of which are far-reaching. The sense of displacement of the main character is echoed by the approach to the story, in the way each section or version is explored and in its functioning within the structure of the full event. | Cinzia Nistico | Performance | Black Box | 40 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Cinzia Nistico | | | Cinzia Nistico | | Cinzia Nistico | Cinzia Nistico | Cinzia Nistico | | | Cinzia Nistico | James Murrey | | | 21-Sep-2014 | Netherlands | Amsterdam | Camenae in Splendor | 50 | Camenae Productions, Tiziana Pintus, Cinzia Nistico, Janusz Madej | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 4 | EMES Symphony | Symphonie Chorale | EMES Symphony is a work written by Maria Luisa Macellaro La Franca in tribute to victims of the Holocaust. And to speak about the problem of racism today it is open to all public for his message full of universal values. During 1942, the Nazis decided to exterminate all the Jews of Europe. Over six million of them, men, women and children, perished. This "Catastrophe" (Shoah in Hebrew), is she served as a lesson? Since then, many other crimes against humanity were committed. EMES means TRUTH. This is one of hope and peace song, a song of all peoples united so that the world does not close its eyes to the new forms of racism and discrimination committed in the world today. The "Symphony EMES" is a work in seven movements for soloists, chorus and orchestra, written in Yiddish and classic style. It is accompanied by a staging of texts by Marguerite Duras, except the texts of the Choir , performed and directed by Maria Luisa Macellaro la Franca The texts of EMES are in French, Latin and Yiddish. They were written by Maria-Luisa Macellaro La Franca, except the first (Primo Levi), the fourth (text of the Agnus Dei),and the last text (folk song). | Polyphonie à Eysines | Performance | Black Box | 120 | Frensh, Latin, Yiddish | | 0 | > 20 | Maria Luisa Macellaro La Franca | Maria Luisa Macellaro La Franca | Emmanuel Lahoz | Maria Luisa Macellaro La Franca | Marguerite Duras, Primo Levi, Bible, and others | Maria Luisa Macellaro La Franca | Maria Luisa Macellaro La Franca | Maria Luisa Macellaro La Franca | | | | | | | 26-Jan-2013 | France | Eysines | Expo | 400 | Polyphonie à eysines | 2015 | | Musik Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Gesang |
| 5 | Speculum Brasilis | | "Extremes meet". This phrase sums up the idea driving the show. The merger is made between two extreme musical aspects: Electroacoustic music and Brazilian folkloric manifestation Bumba-Meu-Boi. Traditional musical instruments, fitted with contact microphones, have their sounds processed in real time, with the aid of computers. An analog synthesizer is also used. Performing situations are, in detail, observed by micro-cameras and thus their images are processed and projected on a large screen in the background. | Jorge Antunes (GeMUnB) | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 60 | No Language | | 0 | 1-10 | Jorge Antunes | | | | | Jorge Antunes | | | | | | | | Dalton Camargos (Image designer) | 4-Oct-2012 | Brazil | | | 200 | Sistrum Produções Musicais | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 6 | Tame Your Man | | Tame Your Man is a ‘living music sculpture’, a theatrical work composed for piano, electronics, rope bondage artist, and narrator(s). It is my first work dealing directly with my sexuality as a gay composer, and my experience of masculinity and power roles within gay culture. The piano music for the piece is comprised of 12 move- ments that roughly follow the traditional ‘circle of fifths’. Stylistically, militaristic pounding and dance club-like movements open the performance and soon become transformed, ending in slower, ecstatic meditations. Over the course of the work, the pianist gets progressively more bound to his instrument, and the piano writing purposefully reduces the range of motionof the hands on the keyboard. The opening movements use a full span of the keyboard, and the last movement allows only the outermost keys to be reached. | Nathan Hall | Performance | Black Box | 33 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Nathan Hall | | | Mark Mangini | | Nathan Hall | | | | | | | | Levi Otter (Bondage artist) | 9-Nov-2012 | USA | Boulder | TLAS Black Box Theater | 100 | Nathan Hall | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Performance |
| 7 | Kredit (Credit) | Von der Erwartbarkeit zukünftiger Gegenwarten (From the expectations of prospective presences) | Experimental film-maker Daniel Kötter and composer Hannes Seidl, who have been working together closely since 2008, combining advanced forms of documentary narrative with New Music, have set their sights pretty high. In the next few years they are setting out to study nothing less than the fundamental conditions of social action by means of film and composition with their project series “Ökonomien des Handelns”. It is to be about love, security and law. In the first instalment they focus on an economy of action that has come to the fore as highly suspicious in the years of the global financial crisis – the economy of action with money, symbolised by the banker’s profession. Kötter and Seidl bring representatives of this profession on stage for KREDIT who they had filmed in Frankfurt, not only during their work, but also during their leisure time. Putting a film together from this material, although the soundtrack has been deleted. A strange menagerie puts the film to music live on stage. Among them, two noisemakers who use the sound of air-conditioning systems, echoing steps in the corridor or the clicking of computer keyboards to create the typical ambience of different film genres, and a dubbing actor who gives his voice to the characters. Individual bankers from the film are on stage too, creating the soundtrack, from subtle to totally rackety noise textures. They are accompanied by the amateur choir of the German Bundesbank singing credos of musical history and contemporary commentaries , chorals and political battle anthems. A credo against probability, banker docufiction and post-punk oratorio in a film setting between TV feature and Hollywood. | Kötter Seidl | Performance | Black Box | 75 | | | 0 | 11-20 | Daniel Kötter & Hannes Seidl | | Rochus Paul | | | Daniel Kötter & Hannes Seidl | Rahel Kesselring | | Gerda Strobl | | Daniel Kötter & Hannes Seidl | | | | 5-Oct-2013 | Austria | Graz | steierischer Herbst | 200 | steierischer Herbst; Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt, Kötter Seidl GbR | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 8 | Projekt Wildeman | | Project Wildeman are tricky bunch to describe. This four-man tribe from Amsterdam is known for its highly energetic and intense music shows. They mix corporate poetry with African percussion, frantic pagan dances with robotic Euro house, hilarious verbal crossfires with ominous soundscapes – all with the greatest of ease. For their show WIJ/WE Project Wildeman invites you to witness a touching and absurd ritual of modern city life that incorporates many of our dilemmas such as virtual identity versus the physical awareness of the other. Language is destroyed by beastly raptures, logic is conquered by quivering bodies, and advanced technology clashes with crude self-built instruments. Prepare yourself for a dazzling experience as these futuristic shamans reclaim their humanity. | Project Wildeman | Performance | Site Specific | 60 | | | 0 | 1-10 | | | | Robin Block | | Sanne van Rijn | Carly Everaert | Carly Everaert | | | | | Sven Hamerpagt | Milan Mes (Live elecronics) | 14-Jun-2013 | Netherlands | Amsterdam | Roest | 150 | Theaterzaken ViaRudolph, Stichting Project Wildeman | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 9 | Ου...Πατσιά...Ρα (Ou...Patsia...Ra) | | “Ou…Patsia…Ra” is an Opera set in Cypriot dialect composed by Andys Skordis in 2014. The story reflects a sculptress who falls in love with her sculpture, in other words her creation. The opera shows the sculptress living in two parallel worlds; her world, where her sculpture is alive and they communicate, and our world where her sculpture is merely an object. The story shows the struggle she is facing as to understand what is happening and what is real or not. The composer designed a piece that would be inspired by the form of Opera but being presented in a different way. His intention was not to create something that the audience would watch, but instead to create an experience that each one would feel in a different way. Among other decisions that would enhance this fact, the composer decided not to have a stage, but instead to create a “stage" in the middle of a hall, which would be surrounded by a plastic material that would function as a surface for the projections and light design, but also to hide the musicians. This decision gives liberty to the audience as far as how to experience the performance, either sitting, standing, moving around or even dancing. Ultimately, this creates something closer to a ritual rather than a performance both for the audience and the musicians. Music comprises of acoustical sounds, electronics and Gamelan pieces. Each sound reflects a different part of the story, creating a soundscape that follows the story line but also co-exists in a harmonious way. Music never stops, and at the same time starts before the audience enters the hall, and finishes after everyone has left, making the whole performance something still in time, like a sculpture. The opera is composed for 9 performers in pairs, an idea which is inspired by the essence of duality and by the story. 2 Singers, 2 Wind players, 2 Percussionists, 2 Strings, Piano (2 hands) and two visual artist comprise a team where two are designed to give birth to a new dimension that without the two its not possible. At the same time, the stage has two frontages, showing different projections. The story is not represented directly by acting, but instead it is suggested through abstract projections and light design. The musicians are not visible, enhancing the mystical and ritual aspects of the piece. Lastly, this is the first and only Opera set in Cypriot dialect so far. | Andys Skordis | Performance | Black Box, Moving Audience | 90 | Greek | | 0 | 11-20 | Andys Skordis | Andys Skordis | | Andys Skordis | | | | | | | Aggeliki Koutsodimitropoulou, Andreas Petrou | | | | 13-Nov-2014 | Cyprus | | | 150 | Andys Skordis, Loouvana Records | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 10 | [kʌu̯ ɪn junifɔɹm] | | [kʌu̯ ɪn junifɔɹm] is a multidisciplinary opera-project. Music, theatre, fashion design, fine arts and graphic design work together in order to create a new world in which they coexist emancipated and work intertwining. In the beginning electronic sounds illustrate the entrance into this world, where three characters live together in a burning house. Fire is a central element of the whole piece; the development of the music throughout the whole opera is based on the development of a fire, by beginning with loose little motifs that grow together slowly, blazing up towards the end, finally dying down quietly. Each one of the three characters has his own musical process combined with an own instrumentation, which, on the one hand, symbolizes his nature and, on the other hand, the fate that threatens him and from which each one tries to escape, without success. So their determination takes its course, accompanied, transmitted and probably caused by two other, non-human, creatures. In their last moments the three characters, each, undergo a development from singing to sprechgesang to speaking which symbolizes their fading vitality. It is not clear what fate threatens each one of them or why the house is burning. And overall much stays intelligible, because everybody (except one of the creatures) talks in a fantasy language. One has to get oneself onto another level of comprehension. Thereby one is able to experience the situations of the characters without the distance of rationality – by the rich acoustic and visual expressions of the different disciplines involved | Simon Al-Odeh | Opera | Black Box | 50 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Simon Al-Odeh | | | Simon Al-Odeh | | Meriel Brütting | Gijs Verhoofstad | Eline, Keuchenius | | | | | | Anna Laederach (Graphic designer) | 7-Jul-2014 | Netherlands | | | 0 | Simon Al-Odeh | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 11 | The Experiment | A musical monodrama | THE EXPERIMENT reimagines Mark Ravenhill’s horror monologue as a 21st century musical monodrama. Stunning video art and self-playing instrumental interludes complete this immersive hybrid collaboration that explores the dark side of scientific ethics and moral relativism. THE EXPERIMENT is a solo work for virtuoso guitarist Mauricio Carrasco who recites text in the tradition of the genre as conceived by its creator Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Situated on the dark side of memory and identity, The Experiment features the visceral imagery of painter and video artist Emmanuel Bernadoux, in an immersive production designed by Matthew Gingold with music by composer David Chisholm and guest composer. | Sydney Festival (David Chisholm) | Performance | Black Box | 50 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | David Chisholm | | | Mark Ravenhill | | | | | Jude Anderson | | Emmanuel Bernardoux | | | Matthew Gingold (Media system and scenic design), Narayana Demasson (Scenic sculptor), Benjamin Kolaitis (Robotics), Fernando Garnero (Guest composer, Interlude #2) | 14-Jan-2015 | Australia | Adelaide | Spectre Theatre | 200 | dchouse | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 12 | TRANSFLEISCH (TRANSFLESH) | | TRANSFLESH is an experimental contemporary music theatre performance for one actor, electronic music and video. It is about using current scientific models to deal with perception, consciousness and reality and philosophical discussions. The starting point is the theory of Thomas Metzinger. He said that “the content of consciousness is the content of a simulated world located in our brain and that the feeling of the existence itself is a part of this simulation.” (“The Ego Tunnel”). The problem is, that his explanatory model can’t be proved by science. But there are more possibilities in the philosophical and aesthetic discourse in contemporary music and video art. TRANSFLESH is working with the instruments of excessive demands. It is very complex. Video, music and text/performer are respectively going for their own aesthetic independence. They don’t bow to the dictum of harmony and hegemony of one single art. A video working with strobe effects fills the whole stage, a composition of electronic contemporary music develops physical power, and a complex text is presented by a puristic voice: Together it creates a production like an excessive demand of the senses which operates like an edge experience. Concerning the composition it means that the limits of acoustic perception come to the foreground. The recordings of the acoustic instruments such as piano, violin and double bass form the centre of the sound world. The acoustic nature of these instruments will be expanded and fractured in different ways. A meta body develops blurring the borders of real and non-real. The almost not audible sounds of the violin will be amplified till they form a sound volume showing a new dimension of the instrument. Subwoofer reproduce the amplified deep tone of piano and double bass and produce a physical feeling, which normally can’t be felt. The spectator is on one hand delivered to the strength of the sound and on the other hand to his own curiosity to experience unknown perceptions. He will get roped into a musical tornado. | Theater 51 Grad (Rosi Ulrich) | Performance | Black Box | 50 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Sergej Maingardt | | | Rosi Ulrich | | | | Trixy Royeck | Rosi Ulrich | | Sergej Maingardt | | | Juir Morosov (3D-Animator) | 13-Nov-2013 | Germany | Köln | Alte Feuerwache | 80 | theater-51grad, Freihandelszone - Ensemblenetzwerk Köln | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 13 | Pictures from Gihan | | This show is the attempt to reach a person. Gihan I. is a young egyptian blogger. Three years ago, like hundreds of thousands of her fellow citizens, she lived through a revolution. Starting from the first image of February 11, 2011 in which Gihan is interviewed in Tahrir Square, until today’s tweets through which Gihan tells of her life in Cairo under the military coup, we try, through her glance, to trace a personal and collective story, recollecting and manipulating the traces of a life that happens faraway from us, asking ourselves why we feel it so close to ours. And wondering in which ways it speaks to us. The two founders of the company, Claudia Sorace and Riccardo Fazi, back onstage after six years, recollect the traces of three personal lives and put them together, make them explode, attempting to understand in which ways and through which questions, these faraway lives could connect, even if only for the length of a performance. The show is a multimedia project into which all the sound and music elements are originally written and produced. The music is composed by Riccardo Fazi, historical composer of the company, while all the sound elements that build the sound score that crosses the whole show are produced live by the interaction of the performers with the stage elements. Inspired by the work of traditional Foley radio artists, all the movements and actions on stage produce sounds that help visualize the narration as it unfolds: all the elements onstage are microphoned so to render them acoustically reactive. At the same time, the sound score contains the assemblage of a huge amount of sounds collected during a three months work of research of field recordings that the two performers did on their own lives while they were really trying to reach Gihan I., during the summer of 2013. | Muta Imago | Performance | Black Box | 50 | Italian, English | | 0 | 1-10 | Riccardo Fazi | | | | | Claudia Sorace | Maria Elena Fusacchia | | | | | | | | 13-Nov-2013 | Italy | | | 200 | Muta Imago; Romaeuropa Festival | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 14 | Blauwbaard (Bluebeard) | | An amazing Bluebeard Holland Opera has succeeded to bring a phenomenal beautiful, contemporary and convincing opera. Oswin Schneeweisz Theaerkrant june 2013 Bluebeard is a new opera written by the Dutch composer Chiel Meijering, commissioned by Holland Opera. This opera was performed on one of the biggest fortresses of Holland, the Fortress of Rijnauwen (near Utrecht) as a site specific performance. Based on the wellknown story of Charles Perrault writer Imme Dros wrote the libretto. Meijering wrote the music for 5 singers, a woman’s choir, a stringorchestra and a rockband. This opera was also a coproduction between dancecompany De Stilte and orchestra the Carthago Consort. | Holland Opera | Opera | Site Specific | 75 | Dutch | | 0 | 11-20 | Chiel Meijering | | | Imme Dros | | Joke Hoolboom | Douwe Hibma | Ineke Duijvenvoorde & Sophie Ketting | | Jack Timmermans | | Maarten Warmerdam | | Andrea Droës (Light sculptures) | 20-Jun-2013 | Netherlands | Bunnik | Fort Rijnauwen | 0 | Holland Opera; De Stilte | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 15 | - there is no why here - | | - there is no why here - is a multimedia music theatre project conceived and composed by Andrea Molino, in collaboration with Giorgio Van Straten for the text choice and the dramaturgy. The title is taken from “If This Is A Man” by Primo Levi: it is the answer he received from a guard in Auschwitz who snatched an icicle from him that he wanted to melt to quench his thirst. The basis of the project’s dramaturgy is, following Hannah Arendt, „the fundamental problem of the nature and function of human judgement”: the critical point where the traditional ways of distinguishing between right and wrong, between good and evil, fail; the solitude of man in this condition, the ultimate necessity to assume responsibility. This failure takes place precisely in the situation where this ability to distinguish would be most useful: when the very definition of the essence of the human condition is at stake. – there is no why here - is the final chapter of a trilogy which started with two previous multimedia projects by Andrea Molino: CREDO, 2003-2004, on ethnic and religious conflicts, and WINNERS, 2005-2006, on “winners and losers”. Different important constituents of these two projects are also present in this one: - the theme is non-literary and has strong social connotations; - the choice of a non-narrative dramaturgy; - the use of textual and audiovisual contributions from different sources, organically inserted into the texture of the musical and multimedia composition; - the presence on stage of a symphony orchestra – a major theatrical character – together with the vocal and instrumental soloists; - an integrated and dramaturgical use of new communication technologies. The different elements of the musical, theatrical and multimedial vocabulary (music, texts, multimedia, interactivity, sound, stage, light) are conceived together and converge into an organic language, through the instrumental use of technology. The flow of the performance is created through a continuous sequence of musicaltheatrical moments, each one approaching one or more aspects of the theme, connected through a non-narrative but linear dramaturgy. A specific and innovative approach to the possibilities of multimedia is a particularly important element. The video contributions will be physically played by the performers. A specific multimedia software (MeRit)will allow the musicians to musically interact with the audiovisual material: the video becomes an instrument. | Teatro Comunale di Bologna (Andrea Molino) | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 90 | Italian | | 0 | > 20 | Andrea Molino | | | Giorgio van Straten | | Wouter van Looy | | Johanna Trudzinski | | | Kurt d'Haeseleer | | Holger Stenschke | Ief Spincemaille (Scenography), Anna Falkenstern (Video editing) | 5-Jul-2015 | Ilaty | Bologna | Teatro Comunale di Bologna | 1200 | Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Muziektheater Transparant | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Vokalartisten |
| 16 | Uncensored Berio | | „Uncensored Berio“ is a multimedia opera with music by Luciano Berio and Jocy de Oliveira. Libretto and text , conception, videos and general direction by Jocy de Oliveira. It was written in memory of Berio for the tenth anniversary of his death. With elaborated scenic resources , the opera dramatizes the author’s journal and correspondence with Berio during the sixties and seventies recapturing an absorbing story of an artistic and affectionate encounter. Without following a linear or chronologic story, the opera weaves music, storytelling , dialogues and letter readings into a delicate memory landscape. The ton of this touching script elapses between musical observations, deep moments of emotion, unknown anecdotic and fascinating stories. The piece opens and closes with the current theme of a „Naufrage“ assembling segments from Berio’s prophetic “Opera” and Jocy de Oliveira ‘s music. | Brookfield and SESC Sao Paulo (Jocy de Oliveira) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 130 | Italian, Brasilian | | 0 | 11-20 | Jocy de Oliveira, Luciano Berio | Roberto Minczuk | | Jocy de Oliveira | | Jefferson Miranda | Débora Lopes, Cristina Novaes | Jefferson Miranda | | | Jocy de Oliveira, Bernardo Palmeiro | | | | 14-Aug-2012 | Brazil | Rio de Janeiro | Teatro Municipal | 2400 | Spectra Produções; Theatro Municipal Rio de Janeiro | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 17 | Bergpiraten (Mountain Pirates) | Eine Bündner Schurkenoper | In a small touristic village in the alps the times are difficult. In this situation a sheik appears with an idea for investment. He plans to dig a huge hole in a nature reserve of great beauty. The reasons are a secret. He is supported by the hotel owner, who is a rather shady character. The hotel owner hopes for investment from the sheik for his dream of creating a summer paradise in the village which will fill his failing hotel with wealthy guests. The is the lady’s man Jonny, Pauline, the daughter of the hotel owner, the ecological activist Carla, the high class call girl Nina, the hotel receptionist Pavel who has seen everything-- and other scurrile characters that work together and against each other. They all have their own plans motivated by greed, love, passion, principle and profit. Mountain Pirates is a parable about greed and the sacrifice of nature and the environment for economic development. At the end all the characters have resorted to lies and deceit in order to promote their own interests and goals. But there is a completely unexpected turn of events which leads to a relatively happy end for nature and the people. There are 17 songs throughout the music theater in different styles accompanied by a hotel band of piano, guitar and saxophone/clarinet. The premiere performances were given in Chur, Switzerland in the Canton of the Grisons. This area has had extremely intense development in tourism in summer and winter for over 100 years. The most famous town in this region is St. Moritz. | Theater Chur (Verein Bergpiraten) | Other | Black Box | 100 | German | | 0 | 11-20 | Robert Grossmann | | | Anita Hansemann | | Achim Lenz | Silke Bauer | Evelyn Thell | | | Silke Bauer | Roger Stieger | | | 28-Jan-2015 | Switzerland | Chur | Theater Chur | 400 | Anita Hansemann, Theater Chur | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 18 | Ophelia after Hamlet | | Ophelia after Hamlet a performance based on William Shakespeare's piece and a research into Femicide. Ophelia after Hamlet is a diatribe, in which an "under water Ophelia" lectures a wilderness, pathetic, almost standing on the sidelines, Hamlet who only seeks to mitigate his actions and needs, with immediate pleasure, takes distance from worlds pain and reality. Surrounded by his horror phantasms, he seems like a helpless spectator in front of the tube, zapping through the channels. In Ophelia after Hamlet, the secondary characters are the ones who spin the story. Those who do not determine the courses of action, but very well participate in the inevitable chain of violence. We developed a circular space composed of four sides, each of them two metres long and one meter wide, around a central base of one metre by one metre. The spectators are positioned on the four sides of the resulting circle, allowing the view and perspective to differ from one spectator to another. Language: Aims to combine the sound and video installation with movement and free adaptation and use of the text. | MEDEA 73 | Performance | Black Box | 65 | English, Spanish, Dutch | | 0 | 11-20 | Juan Albarracin | | | | | Lorena Briscoe | | | Lorena Briscoe, Fabián Gómez | Lorena Briscoe | Philipp Gabriel | Menso van Strien | | | 20-Nov-2013 | Netherlands | | | 120 | MEDEA 73, AASTA | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Performance |
| 19 | For Your Ears Only | | For Your Ears Only, is a concept based radiophonic theatre show using voice, field recordings, foley sound and music composition. The main question of investigation was how can sound & sonic art effect the sensory perception of an audience to enable them to create their own show. And quite unconventional, in that what you see on the stage is much less than what you experience. This is due to the design of the piece. We use the sonic form of the Radio Play in conjunction with a dense music composition, theatricalize this by placing it in a theatre venue, using specific spacialisation of the soundscape, and minimal lighting, to enable the storytelling of a fantastic theatre show. There are no real actors on stage, only sound in the space. What makes this show particular is that we are working with the principles of a radio play, whereby you as audience imagine the action being played out from the audio information you receive. What is exceptional about this piece is that the narrative of the story is not only told through the soundscape but also by three critics who are describing their personal experience & critiquing a show the have jointly seen. Which in fact, is show that was never made. All the processes of the making For Your Ears Only were through audio only means. Firstly, I asked the theater collective Superamas to give me a concept of their ideal show. Together we recorded 4 hours of listening material about this piece that was then given to three professional critics, 2 from Belgian and 1 from the UK. They listened to and about the show, imagined it themselves and built their critiques based on that. We recorded a further 6 hours of Critique in studio from which we made an edited script. We accompanied this with scenes we built of the fantastic show, via field recordings, music composition and foley to create our piece For Your Ears Only. Through using these recordings and musical components we created a sound and music scape that accompanies the voices to tell the story of the Superama’s show. However we not only replicate this fake show; we also make a comment on the theatre process itself from concept to critique, and how the Artistic Critique is disappearing from the main media, replaced by the 5 star Rating system, quick and digestible. What we aim with For Your Ears Only, is to give the audience their own experiential exclusive show, told through sound alone. | Pianofabriek Belgium (Dianne Weller) | Other | Black Box | 60 | English | | 0 | 0 | | | | | | Dianne Weller | | | | | | Hans Meijer | Ruben Nachtegaele | Bart Van den Eynde (Artistic advice), Elke Van Campenhout, Pieter T'Jonck, Andrew Haydon (Critique) | 19-Feb-2015 | Belgium | St Gillis | Pianofabriek | 180 | Kunstenwerkplaatz Pianofabriek Belgium; Beursschouwburg Brussels Belgium, Vooruit Gent Belgium, Kunstencentrum BUDA Kortijk Belgium, Vlaamse Gemeenschap Belgium, Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie Belgium,
Critical Path Choreographic Research Centre Sydney Au | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now |
| 20 | Alcin@ | Opern-Theater-Pop-Projekt | ALCIN@ / GEORG FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL / NAKED LUNCH / Opera-Theatre-Pop-Project // Director and author Bernd Liepold-Mosser enriches in ALCIN@ Georg Friedrich Händel’s baroque opera masterpiece with aspects of the parallel universe of modern times, the internet and its social networks. The setting of the opera is the enchantress Alcina's island: here by her magic powers she has created a magnificent palace in a beautiful landscape, to lure her many lovers into her power. One of these is Ruggiero, a warrior, who under Alcina's spell has forsaken his duty and his betrothed, Bradamante. | Vorarlberger Landestheater | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 160 | German | | 0 | > 20 | | Benjamin Lack | | Bernd Liepold-Mosser | | Bernd Liepold-Mosser | Karla Fehlenberg, Aurel Lenfert | Karla Fehlenberg, Aurel Lenfert | Dirk Diekmann | | Philip Kandler | | | | 28-Mar-2014 | Austria | Bregenz | Vorarlberger Landestheater | 500 | Vorarlberger Landestheater, Vorarlberger Landeskonservatorium | 2015 | | Musik Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Gesang |
| 21 | Gefährliche Liebschaften (Dangerous Liaisons) | Musical Noir nach dem Briefroman von Pierre-Ambroise-Francois Choderlos de Laclos | Aus Langeweile und weil es ihr Vergnügen bereitet, schlichtere Gemüter zu verderben, spinnt die zynische Marquise de Merteuil ein Netzwerk perfider Intrigen. Mit vorgegaukelter Gutmütigkeit stiehlt sie sich in das Vertrauen derer, die sie vernichten will. Ihr verflossener Liebhaber, der Vicomte de Valmont, wird ihr dabei zum Werkzeug. Um sich am Comte Gercourt, einem anderen verflossenen Liebhaber, zu rächen, beauftragt die Merteuil Valmont, Gercourts fünfzehnjährige Braut, die Klosterschülerin Cécile de Volanges, zu verführen. Valmont schafft dies im Handumdrehen. Er ist ein Libertin erster Güte und kann die Seelen seiner Opfer „in einer Träne berechnen“. Die Kunst seiner Verstellung geht so weit, dass er letztlich nicht bemerkt, wie er sich selbst falsch berechnet und somit selbst ins Verderben stürzt. Choderlos de Laclos komplexe Figuren reduzieren Liebe auf eine Technik der Verführung und ihre Opfer auf Objekte. Die maliziöse Geschichte verhandelt Verlangen, Kontrolle und Macht zwischen Mann und Frau, aber auch die Möglichkeit ehrlicher Gefühle und die Frage, wie sehr sie einen Menschen ändern – oder zerstören – können. | Vorarlberger Landestheater | Other | Proscenium Stage | 140 | German | | 0 | 11-20 | Markus Nigsch | Johannes X. Schachtner | | Paul Winter (Lyrics), Micaela von Marcard (Libretto) | Pierre-Ambroise-Francois Choderlos de Laclos | Paul Lerchbaumer | Thomas Wörgötter | Thomas Wörgötter | Micaela von Marcard | | Anna Allkämper | | | | 30-Apr-2013 | Austria | Bregenz | Vorarlberger Landestheater | 500 | Vorarlberger Landestheater | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 22 | Bluthochzeit (Blood Wedding) | | A good-natured, hardworking young man enters matrimony with a woman. The bridegroom is the only surviving member of a family that has been involved in a feud with the Felixes, and his mother is still overcome with a mixture of rage and fear that her only surviving son will meet the same fate. In rural Spain, where there were no secrets, it was known that the bride had been seeing someone else before the engagement. She is still madly in love with Leonardo (of the Felix family), who is married and the father of a boy. While the wedding celebration continues with singing and dancing, Leonardo rides away with the new bride. He is pursued by the groom, and the two men kill each other, thus causing the mother’s forebodings to come true. | Vorarlberger Landestheater | Other | Proscenium Stage | 100 | German | | 0 | 11-20 | Benedikt Brachtel | | | | Federico García Lorca | Sigrid Herzog | Simone Grieshaber | Bettina Werner | Frank Zipfel | Magdalena Padrosa | | | | Rudolf Wittkopf (Text translation) | 13-Jan-2015 | Austria | Bregenz | Vorarlberger Landestheater | 500 | Vorarlberger Landestheater | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 23 | Yoshinaka | | The seeds of YOSHINAKA are rooted in a cross-cultural collaboration between the Noh theatre master Munenori Takeda and US composer Garrett Fisher. Ideas traveled across oceans, flickered on computer screens and survived various translations to make their to the premiere at Seattle’s ACT Theatre (2014). The opera recounts the long-lived tales of the Yoshinaka Temple where the hero and heroine, Yoshinaka and Tomoe Gozen, are buried, joined later by the renowned 17th century Haiku poet Matsuo Basho. The story of unrequited love tells of these restless spirits as they seek to be reunited in the afterlife. Fisher and Takeda first met in Seattle in 2013. Fisher, whose work is inspired by the Noh tradition (including KOCHO, produced by Beth Morrison Projects), and Takeda, who has performed Noh since the age of two, found common ground in their passion for bringing the beauty of the Noh tradition to contemporary audiences in ways that challenged and reinvented forms. With the help of translators, the idea to create a contemporary opera based on the Noh opera TOMOE was born. There are three gravestones for Tomoe, Yoshinaka, and Basho at the Gichuji temple. After Tomoe’s last battle with her master, Yoshinaka, she was forced to leave his side. Many years later, Basho, who also respected Yoshinaka, asked to be buried there as well. Both Fisher and Takeda found this setting and narrative compelling: for Takeda, the story, based on the TALES OF HEIKE, represents one of the most important epic tales of the Japanese literature; Fisher marveled at how the tale’s themes, with its emphasis on the issues of gender inequality, resonated with our culture today. Both saw the inclusion of the popular poet Basho as the perfect portal through which to draw in Western audiences who might not be familiar with the original history. Fisher integrated Takeda’s performance in ways that highlighted similarities and differences between Noh and Western traditions. He cast the Noh master as the Goddess to explore intersections between Noh’s tradition of having men play female roles and the West’s contemporary interest in gender issues. By casting Takeda as a Goddess and the Western singers as humans, Fisher aimed to create distinct performative “planes,” allowing the audience to draw distinctions and parallels between the different traditions and aesthetics. In all, Fisher and Takeda hope to bridge continents and cultures as a way to preserve and reinvent operatic forms and traditions. | ACT Theatre (Garrett Fisher) | Performance | Black Box | 50 | English, Japanese | | 0 | 1-10 | Garrett Fisher | | | Amy Schrader, Garrett Fisher | | Tikka Sears | | | Ken Cerniglia | Christy Fisher | | | | | 26-Sep-2014 | USA | Seattle | ACT Theatre | 450 | Japan Arts Connection Lab, ACT Theatre, 5 Senses, Inc. | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Performance, Nô-Theater |
| 24 | 4 Musketiers (4 Musketeers) | | 4 Musketeers is the feel good family show with music by Oene van Geel, winner of the 2013 Boy Edgar Award. It's a show about three men with a mighty past and a great mutual friendship. Once upon a time the men were true heroes, but now they run a greasy spoon in order to get by. When one day a young girl turns up saying one of them is her father, the fat is in the fire! | Holland Opera | Opera | Black Box | 60 | Dutch | | 0 | 11-20 | Oene van Geel | | | Joke Hoolboom | | Joke Hoolboom | Douwe Hibma | Sophie Ketting, Ineke Duivenvoorde | | Nelse van Heurck | | Maarten Warmerdam | | Jeroen Lopes Cardozo (Battle choreography) | 21-Dec-2013 | Netherlands | Amersfoort | Holland Opera | 180 | Holland Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 25 | I'm Building | | “I’m Building” is a theater piece for two actors and a djembe, floor tom, soprano recorder, alto recorder, slide whistle, Irish whistle, and piano. The instruments are placed around the stage, creating a ritual environment that the performers treat with deference. Choreography highlights their ceremonial properties, as if their sounds are to be used and meditated on. With procedural gestures, the actors play and manipulate the instruments. The work begins with a pageantry that proceeds irrationally, leading to self-flagellation and other effacing demonstrations. Between these movements are silences, adding tension, always to be broken by the urgency in sound and movement. A confrontation develops, opaquely sexual, and leads to the last section of the piece. The performers complete their ritual and they part, unsure of the meaning they constructed. “I’m Building” comes from a tradition of concert theater, that is to say a genre in which sound and visuals are conceived simultaneously. It follows along the practice of Heiner Goebbels and Jani Christou, two composers who implemented acting as musical gesture. In the case of this work, each bodily maneuver follows another with formulaic intent, physical pauses separating them as to paint a moment. These “freezes” lead to a relaxation of character; the performers interrupt their personas and are directed to listen. Music is thus highlighted. The audio for the work isn’t to be perceived in chunks like the theater. Although intense moments of sound are created via physical exertion, these sounds are meant to participate with the environment. They blend and linger as the audience is asked to contemplate their morphing. The work acts as a single piece of music comprised of several theatrical events. Similar to the abstracted dream-like world that Jani Christou often created, “I’m Building” shows how rituals may be perceived by an outsider: bizarre and selfconsuming. ¬ There is a possession that holds the performers while they fulfill their motions. However, through self-aware questioning, the illusion of their actions dissipates and the work is left unstable. Both sound and image become disingenuous. | Christoffer Schunk | Performance | Site Specific | 15 | | | 0 | 1-10 | Christoffer Schunk | | | | | Christoffer Schunk | | | | | | | | | 11-Jul-2014 | USA | | | 20 | Harmless Pictures | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Performance |
| 26 | Eerie Days | | Eerie Days is a Music Theater performance in form of an interactive installation about medically induced coma dreams by Claudia Hansen. Silence, sound, light, motion photography, darkness, video animations, overwhelmingness and emptiness reconstruct the state of medically induced coma – the dreams and feelings. It is a construction based on stories told by people that have experienced it. The audience is at the center of the performance space and put into ‘spotlight’. In other words, they become the protagonist of medically induced coma. The performance space is an 8m2 room, especially constructed for this performance. In order to experience the isolation felt in coma, it is performance where maximum four people can enter at the same time. The audience lies down on the floor and is transported into a full body experience of medically induced coma dreams. The visuals, the sounds and the tactile impressions fill the box with impressions of dreams and feelings – the loneliness of medically induced coma. The music has been composed, played and recorded especially for this performance. The main instruments are the vibraphone and other percussion instruments. It is a 20– minute soundscape that transports the audience into a different state of mind by depicting feelings experienced in coma dreams. On the one hand, the music is very comforting since it sounds like a never–ending lullaby, but on the other hand, through the extreme bass tones in the music, the floor starts to vibrate and makes the performance also a tactile and oppressive experience. The visuals consist of motion photography, silent movies and video animations. The visuals fill the space with oversized and heavily colorful projections. They depict the visual aspect of the different stages a person comes across on the journey of coma dreams. The texts are spoken by a voice. The first text reconstructs the fragmented thoughts one has while being in medically induced coma. This text has been written especially for this performance. The second text concentrates on thoughts on death. This text is an excerpt from Max Frisch’s book ‘Fragebogen’. | Claudia Hansen | Performance | Black Box | 21 | Dutch, English, German | | 0 | 0 | Claudia Hansen | | | Claudia Hansen | Max Frisch | | Claudia Hansen | | | | Claudia Hansen | | | | 23-May-2014 | Netherlands | Leiden | Stadsschouwburg | 4 | Claudia Hansen | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Videokunst |
| 27 | Two Acts | | The opera was premiered on November 1, 2012 in St. Petersburg in the Atrium of the General Staff Building of the State Hermitage in the framework of the Year of German in Russia 2012/13 and was performed by the German ensemble Mosaik with conductor Enno Poppe. "Two Acts" is the Grand Prix winner of the Sergei Kuryokhin Award (2013) and was nominated for the Russian National Theatre Award "Golden Mask" (2013). Characters from the history of culture often appear as protagonists with writer Dmitry Prigov. Here we have Hamlet and Faust. Prigov acknowledges them as two types of reflexing consciousness, deeply rooted in European culture. Yet here the reflection does not have the same intensity as the primary source, rather only the inertia of fading motion. They are not to be mistaken for heroes – they are ordinary, and even marginal; their reflections are awkward and out of place. The sad truth is that contemporaneity sets a framework which does not allow these characters to live up to their destinies. The rules of life are not in discord with the pathos of “lofty thoughts”, but fully compatible with this pathos as a prop of behavioural routine, a mere unobtrusive habit. Today they are the rustling whisper of language. Nothing more than that. | The State Hermitage Museum Russia, Vladimir Rannev (Ensemble Mosaik) | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 60 | Various (mainly English) | | 0 | 11-20 | Vladimir Rannev | Enno Poppe | | Dmitry Prigov | | Vladimir Rannev | | | | | | | Daniel Plewe | | 1-Nov-2012 | Russia | St. Petersberg | The State Hermitage Museum, General Staff Building | 1000 | The State Hermitage Museum Russia; Goethe Institut Germany | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Videokunst |
| 28 | Dissus, verdwaal mee in de Odyssee (Dissus) | | Dissus, verdwaal mee in de Odyssee is Kwatta’s music theatre show, based on the book Dissus from Simon van der Geest, which received the Gouden Griffel 2011.* From October 2014 to January 2015, Kwatta played Dissus in cooperation with the orchestra Het Gelders Orkest throughout the Netherlands. Dissus is a swinging and adventurous show. With his seven friends, Dissus gets lost. On their way, they experience big adventures. They meet enourmous excavators, angry anglers and Kirke, an enchanting girl. Everywhere, there is the danger. And if Dissus returns after a long trip, his place is grabbed. He seeks for revenge! Dissus is a ‘polder odyssee’, full of tough and scared heroes, full of friends and enemies. Dissus is a music theatre show, in the direct ‘poetry slang’ of nowadays. | Theatergroep Kwatta | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 100 | | | 0 | 11-20 | Rogier Bosman | | | Simon van der Geest (Text), Josee Hussaarts (Editor) | | Josee Hussaarts | Siem van Leeuwen | Barbara Kroon | | | | Paul van Laak | | | 12-Oct-2014 | Netherlands | Nijmegen | Schouwburg | 600 | Theatergroep Kwatta | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical, Kinder und Jugendstücke |
| 29 | An Old Monk | | The old Monk is dancing. While his band really gets into the groove, he leaves the piano to its own devices, stretches his stiff limbs and does a dance. Dances with no other aim than dancing itself, both cheerful and solitary. In 'An Old Monk', Josse De Pauw and the Kris Defoort Trio get into dance. It turned into a suite, a long ode to the desire to ‘raise the old bones higher than expected’ and to try doing a dance once again. | LOD muziektheater, Théâtre Vidry-Lausanne | Performance | Black Box | 70 | Dutch | | 0 | 1-10 | Kris Defoort | | | Josse De Pauw | | | | | | | | | | Bache Jespers, Benoît Van Innis (Images) | 7-Nov-2012 | Belgium | Bruges | | 120 | LOD music theatre; Théâtre Vidry-Lausanne | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 30 | The House Taken Over | | 'The House Taken Over' is the story of a grown-up brother and his sister living together in a house that has been property of their family for generations. The past that lead to this situation is unclear, and the fact that there’s only two of them shapes their limited and repetitive daily routines. Besides the demonstratively well-organized act of keeping the house clean, it is only the sister’s over-committed knitting that seems to catch their attention; their life is quiet and circles around contents and things that others might find boring or even hollow. However, beneath that bland surface something of much less banality determines the daily routine. Brother and sister feel that they are being pursued by an unknown threat which they never get to see or actually confront but which they know is there anyway, only noticeable as indefinable noises in the house. In order to protect themselves from that nebulous threat they shut all parts of the house that are occupied by noises. By the time the areas where the man and Irene can actually live get smaller and smaller; beyond that the siblings are increasingly being deprived of their everyday commodities that have to be left behind in the taken sections. Finally the only way for the two to escape is to leave their house – their only purpose in life – behind. 'The House Taken Over' starts as a realistic story that slowly is being undermined of by fantastic elements, with the appearance of an unknown entity taking over the power. In the end the nature of that mystical threat remains as irritating and unsolved in its existence as the characters do: they never reveal their motivations, the reason of their fear and –most importantly– their relationship to each other nor the strange power they allow to take over their house and lives. Inspired by a novella by Julio Cortázar, the Portuguese composer Vasco Mendonça and the English dramaturge Sam Holcroft immerse themselves in the secrets of a couple played matchlessly by two singers, who in their turn are backed up by an instrumental chamber ensemble. The director Katie Mitchell aims to transpose what remains unspoken, as well as the disturbing alienation of the story, to the stage. | LOD muziektheater, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 60 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Vasco Mendonça | Etienne Siebens | | Sam Holcroft | Julio Cortázar, | Katie Mitchell | Alex Eales | John Bright | Lyndsey Turner | | | James Farncombe | | | 6-Jul-2013 | France | Aix-en-Provence | Festival d’Aix-en-Provence | 450 | Festival d'Aix-en-Provence et de l'Académie européénne de musique, LOD music theatre; Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Fondation Gulbenkian Lisbon, deSingel Antwerp, Asko∣Schönberg Ensemble | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 31 | Sneeuw (Snow) | | The piece starts off from two sources of inspiration: on the one hand there is snow, the substance, which has a mass of contradictory properties (light, vulnerable, small, wet, enjoyable, dangerous, intrusive, slow, pleasant, cold etc.). On the other hand, there’s the age-old Russian fairy tale of Snegurotshka, about a snowgirl who lives on the rhythm of nature, but who can also control that nature. There are several versions of the story, but in every one of them, the girl has control over certain natural phenomena, such as mist, ice and snowstorms. However, she cannot stand heat, which makes it impossible for her to fully take part in the human world. She’s often alone, but finds herself protected by a fire-red fox that follows her around everywhere she goes. There’s just one female dancer/singer on stage, assisted by a guitarist. She tells her story in a universal language. The designers from Ruimtevaarders are translating the natural power that emanates from snow into a poetic set that flirts with hot and cold, light and dark, vastness and intimacy, chaos and order. Snow takes you on a visual and musical journey that can take the form of a different story for everyone in the audience. Put together like a snow crystal: at first sight it’s a thick flake, but the longer you look, the more you’re struck by the finesse and beauty of its bifurcations. | LOD muziektheater, Silbersee | Opera | Black Box | 45 | | | 0 | 1-10 | Thomas Smetryns | Romain Bischoff | | | | Inne Goris | ruimtevaarders | Lieve Meeussen | | | | Mark Van Denesse | | Benjamin Dousselaere (Soundscape) | 12-Feb-2015 | Belgium | Ghent | Kopergietery | 180 | LOD music theater; Silbersee | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 32 | Le Stéréoscope des Solitaires (Maverick's Stereoscope) | A Labyrinthine Course after Texts by Juan Rodolfo Wilcock | It is possibly due to the fact that J.Rodolfo Wilcock wrote his most well known work in Italian that the Argentinian author is not automatically associated with Argentinian literature. Born in Buenos Aires in 1919, Wilcock died in 1978 in Italy. His short stories and literary incidents are written in the best of Argentinian story-telling traditions. The stories are absurd, seamlessly blurring reality with the surreal, human with animal, people with monsters. Wilcock tells these stories in an everyday language, which underlines the incidental, abstruse figures all the more. In 1972, “The Mavericks’ Stereoscope” was published, in which a world of labyrinths around the Hieronymus Bosch of literature is created: a work full of absurd ideas and virtuosic, deceitful imagination. Seventy mavericks are portrayed in sixty-six stories. One meets a pair of lovers, who decide never to leave their bed and end up consuming themselves. Or there is the emaciated centaur, who paints still life. In another story a “siren” is not at home in the picturesque grottos of the Mediterranean Sea, but on the banks of a stinking river full of rubbish. Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski, Ana Maria Rodriguez and Fred Pommerehn interpret this unusual universe as a labyrinthine course, which will be installed in the circus in Reims. The audience is able to move through the museum-like sound labyrinth and follow the traces left behind by the loners. Winding passageways lead to magnificent showcases and cabinets, which preserve Wilcock’s universe, but are also afflicted by very real phenomena during the course of the evening. | Ensemble KNM Berlin | Performance | Black Box, Moving Audience | 50 | | | 0 | 11-20 | Ana Maria Rodriguez | | | | | Ingrid von Wantoch Rekowski | Fred Pommerehn | | | | | Fred Pommerehn | Alexis Derouet | Ana Maria Rodriguez (Live electronics) | 18-Feb-2015 | France | Reims | Manège de Reims | 300 | Ensemble KNM Berlin; Césaré Reims, Reims Scènes d'Europe, Les Musiques Marseille, Theatre National La Criée Marseille | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 33 | L'autre hiver (Another winter) | Opera Fantasmagorique | Another winter is a new opera by Dominique Pauwels, inspired by the tumultuous relationship between the two legendary French poets, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. Normand Chaurette is writing the libretto and Denis Marleau is directing, together with Stéphanie Jasmin, who has been his companion for many years now. The reputation of Denis Marleau, a major figure on the Quebec theatre scene, extends far beyond Canada’s borders. His artistic approach is distinguished by his challenging literary choices, meticulous directing, and innovative use of audio and video technology. Another Winter is undeniably an opera of our time. Using the turbulent relationship between the French poets Rimbaud and Verlaine as a source of inspiration, Normand Chaurette rewrites their stoy in this production, brought on stage by 2 singers, 6 musicians, video projections, a children’s choir and a women’s choir. A part of them are flesh and blood, a part consists of projected faces. These video characters are very lifelike, yet their faces exude something elusive and alienating… Live voices flow through the recorded singing, the borders blur… This ambiguous world, created by Dominique Pauwels’ music, and Denis Marleau and Stéphanie Jasmin’s staging, is perfectly representative of the story; with paper and pen all seems very poetic and romantic, but in real life the passion turns out to be deadly. A contrast between everyday reality and a world of words that lies in a grey area. A grey sea in which two passengers are sailing through ice cold water… | LOD music theatre | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 90 | English, French | English, French, Dutch | 0 | > 20 | Dominique Pauwels | Filip Rathé | | Normand Chaurette | | Denis Marleau, Stéphanie Jasmin | Denis Marleau, Stéphanie Jasmin | Greta Goiris, Judith Stokart | | | Denis Marleau, Stéphanie Jasmin | Eric Soyer | | | 7-May-2015 | Belgium | Mons | | 368 | LOD music theater; Mons 2015 Capitale européenne de la Culturele, UBU compagnie de création, enoa, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, deSingel Antwerp, Maison de la Culture d'Amiens, Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian, Théâtre français du Centre National d | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 34 | El último teatro del mundo (The World´s Last Theater) | | Obertura (Overture): We are introduced to Pina, a ladybird who is smaller in size than normal ladybirds, and her story. Since we can’t see her, a re-enactment of her story begins. // Comer & Dormir (Eat & Sleep): Pina lives, as part of a ladybirds’ colony, in a lettuce plantation where ladybirds eat lettuce all day long. Pina is mocked by the others because she’s different. She’s been eating spinach, and wants to be big, transcend, achieve greatness. She’s heard humans talk about that. // El Sueño de Pina (Pina’s Dream): Pina has a dream for the first time in her life. Lumbago, the Lord of the Theatre, appears to her in her dreams. He tells her that she can achieve greatness when she finds the last theatre of the world, and performs a number full of magic. She’ll know she’s been successful when the magical fourth wall is broken. This wall can only be broken with a ‘final applause’. To do so, Pina must follow Lumbago’s theatre ticket. // El Último Teatro del Mundo (The Last Theatre of the World): Early the following morning, Pina leaves behind the lettuce plantation and heads out in search for the last theatre of the world. // Quiero Saber (I Want to Know): Pina arrives at an empty field. There she decides to have a rest. Looking up at the stars she wonders how a star that appears so small can shine so bright. // Maga de la Luz (Magician of the Light): Turns out that one of the stars Pina saw was in fact a firefly named Maga (magician). Maga offers to help Pina in her quest. She’ll shed some light along the way, and introduce Pina to Cora, a profesional insects’ interpreter. Maga thinks they’ll need translation when they finally meet Lumbago. // Cora la Traductora (Cora the Interpreter): Pina and Maga arrive at Cora’s door on board the theatre ticket. Maga introduces Pina to Cora, and explains the situation. Cora presents her CV to Pina. We hear how Cora went from being a singer (she was an A-class child star) to developing an obsession with knitting (she makes all of the costumes herself) to being an insects’ interpreter. Cora stopped singing when in the middle of her biggest concert, she heard a cricket chirp. The chirping of the cricket paralyzed her, and from that moment she developed a cricket-phobia. // Fama (Fame): Cora calls Vicente, a talents agent and her former manager, because she thinks he’s the right person to help Pina get her applause. Vicente explains to Pina that what she needs in order to receive that applause is ‘fame’. // Fama Tele (Fame TV): Vicente sends Pina to a soap opera casting. Cora calls Aitor, a friend and fan of hers, to give them a ride to ‘Tele’. Turns out Pina doesn’t have the ‘right look’ for TV. // Las Cosas Me Hablan (Things Talk to Me): Aitor explains his ‘condition’ to Pina and Maga. He has the ability to re-use and make useful things from stuff others have thrown away. He makes things other people need, even without realizing it. // Fama Cine (Fame Movies): Since Pina wasn’t succesful on TV, Vicente sends Pina to a film audition. Again, this is in the opposite direction to where Lumbago’s ticket wants to take them. Again, Pina doesn’t perform well. // Diez en Uno (Ten in One): On their journey they meet Tino. Tino discovered at an early age that he could have conversations with himself, and had the ability to impersonate different characters. That’s how he passed the time in that small village where he grew up. Pina invites him to join them in their quest to find the last theatre of the world. // Fama YouTube (Fame YouTube): Vicente calls. Who needs film or TV in this post-information era? They upload a video. Because Pina is so small, it seems Cora is talking to herself in the video. This provokes a tirade of painful comments. This upsets Cora and Pina. Pina is feeling weary by now. // Si te Conectas (If You Connect): Aitor’s van breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Vico (a musician) and Isa (who interprets music through her body) arrive. It’s clear that Aitor and Vico know each other. Vico explains to the others how music moves people. Aitor invites Vico and Isa to join them in their journey. // Fama Revistas (Fame Magazines): This is Vicente’s last resort. When Pina reads the article that’s been written about her in a gossip magazine, she faces up to Vicente and says, “Enough!” // Mundo de Gigantes (World of Giants): Pina sings of how she used to dream of being big, but now in this world that’s full of giants she feels like she’ll be crushed any minute. Pina decides she’d rather be herself, and go back to the lettuce plantation. Cora realizes that Vicente is responsible for her cricket-phobia. Vicente wanted to make her ‘strong’. Now Cora gathers the courage to rid Vicente out of her life once and for all. She also wants to be herself, not the product of a fame industry. // Nuestra Canción (Our Song): It’s a cold night. It’s a farewell song. The journey’s ended. They didn’t find what they were looking for. They all sing and play together. They perform a number full of magic. They hear someone clapping. // Teatro (Theatre): The fourth wall breaks and Lumbago appears. He tells Pina that fame wasn’t what she needed to find. She needed all the others to perform that number full of magic. Theatre is not just buildings, sets, and machines. Theatre is people coming together and sharing with each other and others. Lumbago encourages them to keep telling their story and breaking more fourth walls. // Final (Finale): They start re-telling their story. Who knows… Maybe at the end there’ll be another audience willing to give them a final applause and break that fourth wall here and now. | La Compania de Pin | Opera | Black Box | 120 | Spanish | | 0 | 1-10 | Iker Madrid | | | José Manuel López Velarde | | José Manuel López Velarde | Iker Vicente | Jerildy Bosch | | | | Sebastian Solorzano | Valeria Palomino | Isaac Saul (Co-Orchestration), Orquesta Basura (Special instrument design) | 3-Jun-2015 | Mexico | Mexico City | La Teatreria | 0 | La Teatreria; Shoshana Polanco, Oscar Carnicero, Alonso Pineda | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Puppen, Musical |
| 35 | Гамлет.Вавілон (Hamlet.Babylon) | | «Hamlet_Babylon» is based on different interpretations of Shakespeare’s «Hamlet» in context of modern multimedia space. This play is a synthesis of two diametrical concepts. Traditional West-European understanding of the theater is mixed with East- European innovative approach. Hamlet’s insanity is reflected through video installations – a virtual world, where life is more intense than in a real one. The main hero of «Hamlet_Babylon» struggles with himself and his addiction to escape reality, he is searching for a shelter called «Home» and eventually loses himself as a personality and individual. Hamlet falls a victim of personal clones, avatars and of total irresponsibility for his own life. The only thing is left - is vengeance. Vengeance to his parents, to his ancestors, but first of all to himself. For making him who he is - a modern implementation of failure of a man. The main core of the play is Danish pilgrim travelling through different countries and – in frames of the play – speaking a language of a land he comes to. He is constantly searching for a home – a place to put down roots, but he leaves only ashes behind.» The music for this play was specially written by Alexey Retinsky. It comprises Ukrainian folklore air and contemporary chamber music. | Oleksii Retinskyi, Dmytro
Kostiumynskyi, Dmytro
Kostiumynskyi | Performance | Black Box | 70 | Ukrainian-English, Ukrainian-French, Ukrainian-Polish | German (for Ukrainian-English) | 0 | 1-10 | Oleksii Retinskyi | | | Kateryna Babkina | William Shakespeare, Heiner Muller | Dmytro Kostiumynskyi | Dmytro Kostiumynskyi, Maksym Poberezhskyi, Oleksii Tishchenko | | | | Maksym Poberezhskyi, Oleksii Tishchenko | Mariya Volkova | | | 29-Nov-2013 | Ukraine | | | 0 | Dollmen group; Koerpus Animus | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 36 | L.I. ∣ Lingua Imperii - violenta la forza del morso che la ammutoliva (L.I. ∣ Lingua Imperii - So violent was the force that struck it dumb) | | Stories of unnameable hunts: not metaphors, but concrete historical phenomena, hateful old habits according to which some men have become predators of other men and, even in the twentieth century, have soaked the soil of Europe with the blood of millions of people: so much its civil heart as its vast and beautiful forests, reaching as far as its mountainous borders. Mourners who no longer want to be hunters and, in front of the resurfaced memory of the victims, complain the burden of guilt for the bloody hunting. The Caucasus — easternmost limit of Europe, natural boundary, Mountain of Languages (as it is sometimes known), inextricable tangle of ethnic groups, maze marking and confounding the boundaries at one and the same time — rises as the epicentre of memory and turns into a mythical place of this judgment. The theatrical form chosen for this creation of ours is the tragic chorus where singing and music, gesture and totemic vision are closely intertwined. A small community of women and men of various ages shoot their voice-darts in between a jolt to the heart a lament and a dream. The chorus includes a singer of Armenian origin. She is a traditional custodian of an ancient and vast musical heritage, and living memory of a people who was wounded by an unforgotten — yet often shamefully ignored — genocide. As on the wide central screen the victim’s manifold face gradually emerges, on the two LCD side screens, a struggle unfolds between two Nazi officers, each championing opposing views of life. L.I., Lingua Imperii, is the language of the empire meant as coercive domination. It is the poor, brutish, deceitful language of the Nazi propaganda. It is the alphabets and the languages taught by force. But it is also a gag imposed as a violent gift by the rulers. Ultimately, it is the very language of violence. | Anagoor | Performance | Black Box | 100 | Italian, German, English | English, Italian (for English) | 0 | 1-10 | Mauro Martinuz, Paola Dallan, Marco Menegoni, Simone Derai, Gayanée Movsisyan, Monica Tonietto | | | | | Simone Derai | Serena Bussolaro, Silvia Bragagnolo, Simone Derai | | Simone Derai, Patrizia Vercesi | | Simone Derai, Moreno Callegari, Marco Menegoni | | | Filippo Tassetto (Translation & language consulting), Silvija Stipanov, Marta Cerovecki, Gayanée Movsisian, Yasha Young, Laurence Heintz (Voice-Over) | 26-Apr-2012 | Italy | Trento | Auditorium S. Chiara | 800 | Anagoor; Trento Film Festival, Provincia Autonoma di Trento, Centrale Fies, Operaestate Festival
With the support of APAP Network Culture Programme of European Union | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 37 | Elsewhere: CelloOpera | | Created by avant-garde cello virtuoso Maya Beiser, in collaboration with theater director Robert Woodruff, "Elsewhere" is a psychological CelloOpera. In two acts, "Elsewhere" tells the tale of two heroic women who are fighting to survive the apocalypse, each attempting to come to terms with their existence as calamity and puzzlement engulf their lives. ACT ONE takes inspiration from “I am Writing to You from a Far Off Country”, a text by surrealist poet Henri Michaux. Far Off Country unfolds as a letter from a young woman witnessing her world as it comes to its end. She takes refuge in a secluded hermitage filled with video that shows the dissolution of the natural world. An alternately haunted and rhapsodic score composed by Eve Beglarian and set to the lyrical Michaux text is an imagining of a dying planet. The voice of the cello attempts to communicate the plight of these cloistered women to another woman in a distant land whose face and voice the audience sees and hears electronically. ACT TWO shows a woman experiencing the violent end of that world. Based on the biblical character of Lot’s wife, a figure from the book of Genesis known for being turned into a pillar of salt as punishment for looking back upon the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, this woman is forever suspended between life and death, and all the while she is forced to look back at the destruction of her world. Separated by time and distance, the two women call out to each other, bearing witness. By incorporating cello, vocals, spoken word, video, dance, and elaborate sets, the piece draws the audience into their catastrophic worlds. The opera includes music by Michael Gordon (co-founder of the Bang on a Can Festival), Eve Beglarian, and Missy Mazzoli with texts by Henri Michaux and Erin Cressida Wilson. "Elsewhere" is a Beth Morrison Projects production. | Maya Beiser | Performance | Black Box | 70 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Eve Beglarian, Michael Gordon, Missy Mazzoli | | | Henri Michaux, Erin Cressida Wilson | | Robert Woodruff | Riccardo Hernandez | Kasia Walicka Maimone | | Brook Notary | Peter Nigrini | Maruti Evans | | | 12-Oct-2012 | USA | Chapel Hill | Carolina Performing Arts, Memorial Hall | 1434 | Beth Morrison Projects | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Performance |
| 38 | As One | | As One is a chamber opera in which two voices—Hannah after (mezzo-soprano) and Hannah before (baritone)—share the part of a sole transgender protagonist. Fifteen songs compromise the three-part narrative; with empathy and humor, they trace Hannah’s experiences from her youth in a small town to her college years on the West Coast, and finally to Norway where she is surprised at what she learns about herself. Part I. In “Paper route,” Hannah rides around her suburban neighborhood delivering newspapers and revels in her more feminine impulses. Her youthful challenges in conforming to gender norms are related in “Cursive,” “Sex ed,” “Entire of itself” and “Perfect boy”—in such disparate subjects as handwriting, sex, a John Donne poem, and exemplary male behavior. However, in “To know,” she discovers that she is not alone in the world and seeks understanding about herself at a local library. Part II. During her college years, Hannah struggles with her bifurcated existence in “Two cities,” but also encounters the joy of being perceived as she wishes in “Three words.” In “Close,” she has made the decision to undergo hormone therapy and briefly suffers its vertiginous effects before feeling at one with her own body. “Home for the holidays,” “A christmas story” and “Dear son” all occur around the Christmas season and relate Hannah’s growing distance to her family and her past, which is countered by an immediate connection with a stranger in a local café. In “Out of nowhere,” Hannah escapes a harrowing assault that prompts her to find a link to the larger trans community and end her self-imposed alienation. Reacting to the conflicting voices in her head, she finally resolves to escape in the fragment, “I go on to…” Part III. “Norway.” In this extended aria, Hannah finds, in Nature, solitude and self-reflection, the simple yet surprising equation that will help her achieve happiness. | American Opera Projects | Performance | Black Box | 75 | English | English | 0 | 1-10 | Laura Kaminsky | Steven Osgood | | Mark Campbell, Kimberly Reed | | Ken Cazan | | | | | Kimberly Reed | | | | 4-Sep-2012 | USA | New York | BAM Fisher Center | 250 | American Opera Projects | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 39 | Extracts From the Underground | | Join eight miners on a descent into the subterranean world of South African Mine. Discover a hidden history. Extracts From The Underground is an original South African work of music theatre. Extracts personalises the human experience within the anonymity of the industrial mining complex. At once historical and acutely contemporary, Extracts will resonate with audiences in South Africa and abroad. The project is a meditation on the sound-world and improvised spoken languages heard within the depths of a South African mine. Miller’s libretto features three rare archival sources: including a 1967 Miners Fanakalo Dictionary and A Register of Mining Accidents dating from the 1930’s. Over the course of the live performance, the audience embarks on a journey of descent: traveling from ground level into the deepest reaches of the earth’s rock-face, and so into the hidden strata of South African history. Along the way we hear testimony from miners about life and labour underground: accidents, challenges of heat exhaustion, dust inhalation and hearing loss. Miller blends multiple African choral traditions – from the a cappella singing of the miners’ choirs (Isicathamiya) to the current protest songs of the labour movement. The singers create the rhythms and sounds of the miners’ tools: the shovels, drills, pick axes, explosives, and heavy machinery that turn underground life into an intense cacophony. Woven into the musical world is a specially devised ‘sound-sculpture’ which the singers strike. This is made up of a series of mining picks individually tuned to distinct musical notes. This sound-sculpture serves as both a musical instrument and as a theatrical element of the staging and design. In the current climate of alienation between worker and mine owners all over the world, Extracts provides an entry point for civil society to engage with this life normally hidden from view - shining light into the darkness of a global obsession to extract the riches from our earth at any cost. | Tshisa Boys Producitons | Performance | Black Box | 40 | English, Fanakalo | | 0 | > 20 | Philip Miller | Thuthuka Sibisi | Thuthuka Sibisi | Philip Miller | | | | | | | | | | Thuthuka Sibisi (Musical arrangement) | 31-May-2013 | South Africa | | | 400 | This Boys Productions | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 40 | Airline Icarus | | Airline Icarus is about the intersecting thoughts of passengers aboard a commercial airplane. It explores themes of hubris mixed with technology, the forced intimacy of strangers and flying too close to the sun. Over the course of the work, the plane becomes brighter and eventually vanishes. In 2001 when visiting with the playwright Anton Piatigorsky, I told him I was looking for ideas about an opera that takes place on an airplane. Anton told me that he had just written a poem about the absurd little society we often take for granted aboard commercial flights and the unsettling mixture of hubris and technology: we’ll make small talk and watch movies while inches outside the window is a glorious cloudscape or freezing certain-death. He later proposed the perfect metaphor for what we were trying to do: Icarus. Icarus , you’ll remember, flew too close to the sun and his wax wings melted and he fell to the earth in a blaze of light. His father, Deadalus, looked for him, crying: “Icarus, where are you!” and “Damn this art!” To me, one of the most interesting parts of the myth is that Icarus disappears in much of the same way that people involved in airline tragedies disappear, and the way the astronauts of the Space Shuttle Columbia disappeared in a blaze of light over Texas. Deadalus’s cries of “Damn this art” are heartbreaking, not so much because Icarus has crashed and died, but more that he knows that we are doomed to keep building things - airplanes, computers, operas - in an endless cycle of trial and error that sometimes leads to disastrous consequences. Like Deadalus, we might curse this sorry state, as does the terrified Scholar, or we can rejoice in the thrill of our power to create wonderful things, as sings the Pilot in his aria – No peace so great. No joy so pure - as soaring Icarus must have thought before the moment he disappeared. In 2011, Airline Icarus was awarded the Italian Premio Fedora Award by an international jury chaired by Louis Andriessen. The 2014 Maniac Star/Soundstreams production of Airline Icarus in Toronto was recently nominated for 5 Dora Mavor Moore awards: Outstanding Production, Outstanding New Musical/Opera, Outstanding Scenic Design, Outstanding Musical Direction and Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble. The NAXOS recording of Airline Icarus was awarded the 2015 Juno Award for Classical Composition of the Year. | Brian Current, Tim Albery (Opera Breve Vancouver) | Opera | Black Box | 46 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Brian Current | Brian Current | | Anton Piatigorsky | | | Teresa Przybylski | Teresa Przybylski | | | | Kimberly Purtell | | | 3-Jun-2014 | Canada | Toronto | Daniels Spectrum | 300 | Maniac Star, Soundstreams | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 41 | Wayang Keroncong (Puppet Kroncong) | | In this show, we can see two original art of our nation long we are not corrected its existence. And separately in each appearance. Kroncong and puppets will be decisive specific imagery in this show. Where will Puppet accompanied by the rhythm kroncong, which has similarities with a gamelan knock. But will not damage the essence or entity of these two arts. Instead would otherwise enrich the art form. Moreover, the show will also feature its motion theater with symbolic body elasticity. We can enjoy the variety of local value unity that became modern glasses herb. Puppet kroncong a true multi-media performances. However, tenants do not dare to say it. Moreover, many say contemporary art or postmodern. Indeed cultivators have no intention to do this show of contemporary art or postmo that many say the audience or previous appreciators. Tenants in this exploration process, are more concerned with the world that is very close to personal tenants. Puppet, kroncong, dance and multimedia is the unity of the anxiety that continues to be anxiety. Local charge becomes an important factor in the conditions of modern contemporary creation. That is the spirit of the theater is how to build and grow the soul and spirit of our ketradisian be the main weapon to examine and explore the development of modern Indonesian theater. | Budiman Asep | Performance | Black Box | 30 | Indonesian | | 0 | 1-10 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 22-May-2009 | Indonesia | | | 300 | Behindtheactors | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Puppen |
| 42 | The Journey Home | A short opera in Arabic and Hebrew based on a true story. | It is the 1920's. Ali, a Palestinian boy from Nablus, has reached his 18th birthday and becomes a man in his own right. Instead of going into the family business and contrary to his father's wishes, Ali decides to leave home and go to the big city, to Jerusalem. In Jerusalem Ali meets and befriends Eliahu, an elder Jew, who invites him to his home for Shabbat. For the first time in his life Ali becomes acquainted with Jewish people and their customs. He is deeply moved by their hospitality and is fascinated by their culture and decides to convert to Judaism. Ali quickly becomes an important figure in his new society. He is respected in the synagogue and his Hebrew is flawless. His new name is Avraham. He finds a good job, he has money, he is tall and handsome. After a short time Avraham meets a Jewish woman, Yehudit, and they fall in love. The couple gets married and move in together. They have children and everything goes well except for the relations between Avraham and Yehudit’s mother. The mother can’t stand him and constantly insults him and makes his life miserable. One day, after another terrible fight between them, Avraham leaves his house and wanders the streets in agony and despair. A British police officer finds him and thinks he looks suspicious. Avraham looks drunk, he mumbles in Arabic and Hebrew and when Avraham cannot produce an ID upon request, he arrests him and takes him into custody. In detention no one believes Ali's story. His family doesn’t even know where he is. After sometime his parents from Nablus learn about his situation and they come to visit him. They manage to convince the authorities to set him free on one condition that he goes back to Nablus with them. At first Ali refuses. He still believes that his Jewish family will come and release him. After a while his parents come to visit him again and this time they manage to persuade him to go back with them. Shortly after, in 1948, war breaks out and the borders between Israel and Palestine close. Ali cannot return to Jerusalem. Despite his wishes he now lives with his parents in Nablus. After a while he meets a local Muslim woman. They fall in love and get married. Ali has a new family now. 20 years later, after the 1967 war, Ali writes a letter to his Jewish family. He is terminally ill. He asks to see them for the last time. Shortly after Ali dies. Everyone, Jews and Arabs, attend his funeral. | Ensemble opus21musikplus | Opera | Black Box | 30 | Arabic, Hebrew | | 0 | > 20 | Amos Elkana | Konstantia Gourzi | | | | Martina Veh | Alexander Polzin | Alexander Polzin | | Martina Veh | | | | | 4-Oct-2013 | Israel | Germany, Munich | Gasteig, Carl-Orff-Saal | 600 | opus21musikplus | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 43 | Emilia Galotti | | This is the first opera ever based on Lessing's play "Emilia Galotti", which is one of the most well-known and most frequently performed plays in Germany. Theater Koblenz commissioned this work to be very practical to produce: it's for an orchestra in almost the same instrumentation as Mozart's "The Magic Flute", requires only 8 vocal soloists and is without chorus. Although this is a very standard size opera the possibilities of the human voices and of the orchestra have been pushed to extremes, creating a work which is and sounds highly original, other-worldly and bizarre rather than standard and classical. The characters in Lessing's original play are constantly under a lot of pressure which in the opera is accentuated by the music. The collaboration between composer and librettist has made this tragedy into a very compact opera in one act of 95 minutes without intermission. | Theater Koblenz | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 95 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Marijn Simons | Enrico Delamboye | | Markus Dietze | Gotthold Ephraim Lessing | Elmar Goerden | Silvia Merlo, Ulf Stengl | Lydia Kirchleitner | Christiane Schiemann | | | | | | 25-Oct-2014 | Germany | Koblenz | Theater Koblenz | 500 | Theater Koblenz | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 44 | Las cartas de Frida | | Frida Kahlo’s letters and personal diaries are the common thread of this contemporary toilette opera. Here, a little-known side of the Mexican painter is presented; a Frida who wonders in her writings, always with a good sense of humor, about artistic creation, the policies of surrealism, physical pain, and her own turbulent personal relationships. The action takes place in Frida’s bathroom. In the privacy of this place, reason and emotions, memories and illusions, are dissolved in a surrealistic experience in which Frida faces her deepest passions and fears. Written for nine instruments, one soprano and three actors, this chamber opera presents a syncretism between minimalism and postmodernism, creating textures of a Mexican —and yet very contemporary— color, enriched with the presence of a trumpet and percussions in accordance with the rest of the instruments. Frida’s bathroom was opened in 2004, after 50 years of being uninterruptedly sealed, although nowadays it remains closed to the public in general. The shock of facing this intimacy, this everydayness suspended for so many years, inspired us to conceive this show as a toilette opera. The famous bathtub where Frida imagined her painting Lo que el agua me ha dado (What the Water has Given to Me) is present in it. Many of the writings which are part of this opera and that were long forgotten are in it as well. It is very likely that Frida spent much of her life in this little space, experimenting the pain and pleasure of her deepest loneliness. The play attempts to extract the emotions contained in Marcela Rodríguez’s opera, and to let them flow from a visual perspective. The staging involves some of the beings which accompanied Frida daily: her monkeys, her Judas, her calacas (skeletons), which appear almost as an extension of the artist herself, embodying her delusions, her passions and fears. Taking one part of Frida Kahlo’s life —previously relegated by the “fridatization” and marketing of her paintings— allows us to understand an amazing fact: that everyday life is perhaps the most surrealistic thing that any person could experience. | Theater und Orchester Heidelberg | Opera | Black Box | 60 | Spanish | German | 0 | 11-20 | Marcela Rodriguez | Christian Gohmer | | | Frida Kahlo | Jesusa Rodgriguez, Clariassa Malheiros | | Marcela Rodriguez | | | | | | | 26-Oct-2011 | Mexico | Germany, Heidelberg | Theater Heidelberg/Opernzelt | 300 | En Chinga Productions | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 45 | A Love Unsung | | A Love Unsung is the second music theatre production made by The Stolz Quartet with their team. The musicians perform the music while being part of the scenery and story. They tell the story with the music, performed by heart, and with their presence on stage. The actor on the screen, the music, the musicians, the scenery and scenografy merge in such a way that the individual disciplines no longer exist as such but together create a new dimension. A Love Unsung is a new opera by Robert Zuidam without vocals: "There will be spoken text, whispering, shouting, music making, but no singing. The heartbeat of the muse will form a special element in the piece, at times being amplified and sounding together with the music that is being played. It’s a strange sort of multi-layered percussion piece that leaves the listener without a moment’s rest.” This multimedia music theatre piece shifts continuously between the present moment and past memories in which passionate love offers various perspectives on beautiful music, and the composer is tormented by remorse, haunted by phantoms from his past. The four musicians of The Stolz will perform A Love Unsung live. The impressive contribution from Flemish actor Johan Leysen will be pre-recorded and projected on a screen. This obsessive quest will continue to resonate long after the liberating finale. | The Stolz Quartet | Performance | Black Box | 70 | Dutch | | 0 | 1-10 | Robert Zuidam | | | Emmanuelle Maridjan-Knoop | | Kees Stolze | Jan Boiten | Van Delft & Co | | | Robert Weelinck | Jan Boiten | | Yon Gloudemans, Tim Stet (Photography), Daniël Gravemaker (Design) | 23-May-2014 | Netherlands | Rotterdam | De Gouvernestraat | 150 | Villa Stolz | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Instrumentales Theater |
| 46 | Space Age - The Phantom Power | | Space Age: The Phantom Power is a contemporary classical performance featuring 5 musical instruments from each of the families in Western classical music respectively. They are: the viola (strings), the flute (woodwind), the French horn (brass), the piano (percussion) and the theremin, which belongs to the new family of instruments, the electronic. First composed in 2010, this work is premiered in the same year under the title Space Age: A Journey like Never Before. Two years later, in 2013, composer Ng Chor Guan, on the Theremin, revised and performed the entire work of 8 movements alongside four other Malaysian musicians. These eight movements all have titles related to the outer space or space travel; they reflect a certain yearning for the unknown, and a wish to retain the mystery and romance of space travel and the unfathomable skies despite the rapid developments of space technology. Ng, at a very young age, once aspired to become an astronaut; while this ambition was gradually replaced by other more attainable ones: ‘music composer’, ‘teacher’, ‘performer’, he remains fascinated with the outer space and the idea of an adventure into the unknown. Armed with music and an instrument as intriguing as the outer space, the Theremin, he creates art that allows him to fulfill these dreams and inspire some in his audience. He describes the Theremin as an instrument ‘played in the air’; much like the way astronauts lead their lives, floating, in a zero-gravity space. Ng wishes to stage Space Age in more diverse and unconventional spaces; spaces that allow him to explore the ideas of ‘space’, both in the literal sense and that which pertains to the theme of this piece. In the finale of the entire work, Panorama, the music paints a picture of a spaceship returning from orbit; a city, a people open up to receive the homecoming of a weary traveler and the audience is at once, the received and the receiving. | Ng Chor Guan | Other | Black Box | 75 | No Language | | 0 | 1-10 | Ng Chor Guan | | | | | | | | | | Chew Winn Chen, Thian Siew Kim | | | | 20-Dec-2013 | Malaysia | Kuala Lumpur | Publika Solaris, White Box | 150 | Toccata Studio | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 47 | Peer, du lügst! (Peer, you’re a liar!) | Ein Tanz-Musik-Theater nach Motiven von Henrik Ibsens „Peer Gynt“ (A Dance-Music-Theatre based on motives of Henrik Ibsens „Peer Gynt“) | "Peer, you’re a liar! " - or maybe he just does not know what is true? Peer Gynt swirls through his world, in a poetic, virtuosic, creative and risky way, always on the go to new stimuli and challenges. Seek his own? Be sufficient to himself ? To extinguish selfish impulses and go along with other people or principles? In this production, the figure of the 19th century is being catapulted directly into today, by the dance style and the songs. This time, Sebastian Eilers, who is a very experienced choreographer in music theatre business, puts the art of song interpretation as a definitive stylistic device into his dance theater story. Henrik Ibsen's poetic art itself aroused Sebastian Eilers' and the composer Gerhard Schmitt's need to set it, the most unchanged as possible, into a song form. Ibsen also supplied the libretto, which was adapted by director Eilers and his ensemble, consisting of a female dancer, a male dancer and an actor. From the beginning, there were some questions that Eilers and his Ensemble attempted to answer during the staging process: To what extent can the dance theater genre be mixed with the musical theater and create a new aesthetic, as well as a more meaningful physical presence of the protagonists? To which musical theater form can the final production most appropriately be assigned? Musical comedy (Singspiel), musical or even "The Threepenny Opera" ("Dreigroschenoper") The recitative quality of the song interpretations perhaps points to the latter. However, in the production "Peer, you're lying!", the text part of the spoken word is much less extensive and the choreography is at least equivalent. Do we obtain a new, separate category of musical theater here ? "Peer, you’re a liar! " was conceptualized in two versions: First , for ensemble and live quartet , and secondly as a version in which the instrumental music is running from a player. As you can see on the video, the premiere in January 2015 took place without a live band. A significant change in the resumption will be that a musician quartet will be integrated into the action on stage and now, to the already existing songs and the few other pieces of music, the "external" compositions will be exchanged by Gerhard Schmitt's original music. | SETanztheater, Tafelhalle Nürnberg | Performance | Black Box | 80 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Gerhard Schmitt | | | | | Sebastian Eilers | Jörg Brombacher | | | Sebastian Eilers | | | | | 29-Jan-2015 | Germany | Nürnberg | Tafelhalle | 200 | SETanztheater; KunstKulturQuartier/Tafelhalle Nürnberg | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Tanztheater |
| 48 | Threads | | Threads is a story about translation for ASL interpreter with hands strung to windchimes at a distance. A recorded dreamscape converses with live sounding chimes of different materials, hanging over the audience and threaded down to the performer signing from the stage. The piece began with a childhood memory of a folk story, running into slant lines in its remembering. The feeling is coming at English from Chinese, or writing sentences as music. | Carolyn Chen | Performance | Black Box | 16 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Carolyn Chen | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 7-Nov-2014 | USA | San Diego | Conrad Prebys Music Center | 100 | Carolyn Chen | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 49 | Sisyphus | | SISYPHUS is a collaboratively-composed opera work that tells a fractured collage of stories that relate to the myth of Sisyphus, King of Corinth and eternal boulder pusher. SISYPHUS is the creation of three artists: Jason Cady, Matthew Welch and Aaron Siegel, all of whom are founders of the New York City-based, composer-focused production company Experiments in Opera. It was premiered in a 4-night run at the Abrons Arts Center in New York City in February 2015. The intention behind the new opera was to showcase a range of compositional voices in a single piece, juxtaposing styles, genres and stories. The composers decided together on a general telling of the myth, and then selected parts of the story that they wished to tell in their musical language. They brought in the designer Kristen Robinson as well as director Ethan Heard to help shape their story into a cohesive evening of theater, albeit one that requires a lot of jumping around narratively and musically. SISYPHUS includes three areas of theatrical activity. Situated stage right is the outline of a cube, in which a modern-day Sisyphus (named Brianna) encounters her own eternal punishment embodied by her struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder. She checks her gas burners, locks her door and counts her steps over and over again in a kind of neurotic hell throughout her 10 short scenes. All of the text and music in Brianna’s Cube is written by Matthew Welch. Stage left hosts the room of a teenager named Aegie, a moody girl who wants only to be left alone to create her video art. Aegie is an imagined version of Aegina, a character from the Sisyphus myth whose abduction leads to Sisyphus’ punishment. All of Aegie’s music and text is written by Aaron Siegel. The remainder of the action takes place center stage and is written by Jason Cady. In his seven short scenes, Jason fills in the pieces to the story, including the relationship between Aegina and Zeus, Sisyphus’ hubris as a despot, and the betrayal of Zeus that leads eventually to Sisyphus’ punishment. All of the action in the opera is framed by a bank heist that features a love triangle and some of the performers of a new opera called ‘Sisyphus.’ SISYPHUS clocks in at 60 minutes of nonstop action, including heartfelt drama and hilarious comedy. It is that rare breed of avant garde opera that is above all fun to watch and engage with. | Experiments in Opera | Opera | Black Box | 60 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Aaron Siegel, Matthew Welch, Jason Cady | | | Aaron Siegel, Matthew Welch, Jason Cady | | Ethan Heard | Kristen Robinson | Maria Hooper | | | Nick Hussong | Masha Tsimring | | | 13-Feb-2015 | USA | New York | Abrons Arts Center | 100 | Experiments in Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 50 | De Waterafsluiter (The Cutter-Off of Water) | | The Cutter-Off of Water – An experiment with new, unusual sounds of acoustic instruments / Published in 1989, Marguerite Duras' Le coupeur d’eau (The Cutter-off of Water) is a moving short story inspired by a tragic fait divers: the suicide of an entire family after a waterworks employee cut off the water. Duras seeks to discover what the mother thought, said and did after she took her decision and what drove the employee to turn off the water. Was he just doing his job, or did he have an ulterior motive? Dirk Roofthooft brings this project together with his soul mate Diederik De Cock who composed the sound for the show Sunken Red (Bezonken Rood). Through the music, the audience has to experience the alienation, voyeurism, the uneasiness that lingers, the heat and the sweltering summer air. | Muziektheater Transparant | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 75 | Flamish | | 0 | 1-10 | Diederik De Cock, Piet Rebel | | | Dirk Roofthooft | Marguerite Duras | Dirk Roofthooft, Diederik De Cock | | | | | Dirk Roofthooft | | Lieven Callens | | 3-Mar-2013 | Belgium | Antwerp | Théâtres de la ville de Luxembourg | 250 | Muziektheater Transparant; deSingel, Théâtres de la ville de Luxembourg | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 51 | Blanche | A Bebop Musical | The elder sister Blanche goes and seeks refugee with her younger sister Stella. Besides the competition for a man, comparison of their own happiness, mutual blessing, is there any other sophisticated emotion between these two sisters? The story starts from traveling in a daze caused by love, and there is more to tell...... The inspiration of this musical drama was flourished from A Streetcar Named Desire(1964), the classic work of Tennessee Williams, one of the greatest American playwrights. Through elaborate creation of Liu Liang-Yen, a well-known Taiwan poet and director, and Ko Blaire, a well-known Taiwan musician, the show was recreated into a distinct musical drama, which was full of jazz music. With over 10 songs, the drama was thoroughly practiced the theory of "Reading music", that is, the way of singing a song is as same as the way of reading the lyrics. Moreover, the length of music accounted for 80% in the whole drama with a large number of orchestral music. Under the excellent performances of young actresses Ma Qingli and Han Shuang, both of whom come from SDAC, this splendid musical drama has displayed to the audiences in Taipei and Shanghai. The outstanding dramatic performances of Ma Qingli and Han Shuang and their touching singing of more than ten original songs captured hearts of those who watched the drama. With the jazz music as the background, these two sisters have accurately and properly performed the songs, dances and traditional Chinese Operas, which made A Bebop Musical-Blanche emerge with unique charm. Blanche tells a story happened during the elder-sister Blanche's visit to her younger sister Stella. Different from the classic original work, there is no male role in this drama. Since the key and the only roles are both female, subtle emotional changes between women, such like envy, jealousy and hatred, are dominant, displaying their helplessness and cruelty during the pursuit of fraternity and romantic love. The drama is going to make an unprecedented breakthrough and profound reflection on the question of "Scenes of Happiness". The director Liang-Yen Liu has already produced six female mono-dramas titled by "Nymphomaniac Theatre Series" since 2005, and the final chapter presented this year, Blanche, which absorbed the author's long-time exploration to traditional Chinese operas and profound acquisition of the spiritual and psychological conditions of dramatic characters. | Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre | Performance | Black Box | 76 | Chinese | | 0 | 1-10 | Blaire Ko | | | Liu LiangYen | | Liu LiangYen | Luo ZhiXin | Tan Kangning | | He QiWo | | Zhang TingZhong | | | 5-Dec-2012 | Taiwan, Republic of China | Taipei | Huashan 1914 Culture Creation District | 160 | Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre (SDAC); Physical Sentimental Theatre Company of LeeQingZhao the Private, Taipei | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 52 | Love and Hydrogen | | Love and Hydrogen is composed with a combination of elements called "relativity music." Relativity Music is music in which one pitch becomes different pitches through motion, specifically through the Doppler Effect - and since the Doppler Effect occurs relative to the position of the listener, members of the audience perceive different music according to their position in space. Instruments called sound pendulums are used to realize this: miniature loudspeakers play sine tones and are manipulated by the performers, creating microtonal variations of a constant tone. In Love and Hydrogen, the instruments are used in a way that explores the impossibility of true communication between people. Harmonically, the opera makes use of chords based on "neutral" thirds, the interval a quarter tone between a major and a minor third. These intervals have a fascinating, unsettling character. If the upper pitch of these neutral thirds is set in motion with a pendulum, the interval swings between a neutral third and the same interval approximately 1/12 of a tone lower, which suddenly sounds clearly minor. These changing harmonies increase in width and frequency until finally the entire ensemble sound is set in motion, and collapses, like the zeppelin as it is destroyed. The entire opera becomes a realization of this idea of relativity music: the concept is applied to the parameters of light, space, costume and performance. The opera takes place around the audience, as opposed to in front of it, and certain interactions between characters are felt and perceived, rather than observed directly. Elements of the staging such as fans and open windows create relative, tactile sensations. The audience enters the performance space by way of a chaotic sound installation in the foyer, preparing it to enter the performance space, which, with its whiteness and utter stillness, suggests the experience of boarding a zeppelin for flight. | PlanetenExport, Ensemble Essenz | Performance | Black Box | 36 | No Language | | 0 | 11-20 | Jeffrey Arlo Brown | Taepyeong Kwak | | | | Franziska Guggenbichler Beck | Sandra Hanschitz | Carine Kuntz, Robin Hildisch | | | | | | Laura Knoops (Graphic designer) | 24-Jul-2014 | Germany | Berlin | Ballhaus Rixdorf | 100 | PlanetenExport; Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, Stadler Form, Flughafen BER Berlin-Brandenburg, Frauenförderung der Stadt Berlin | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Performance |
| 53 | Der Universums-Stulp (The Involution of the Universe) | Eine musikalische Bildgeschichte in drei Heften nach dem gleichnamigen Roman von Eugen Egner | Stephan Winkler’s »Der Universums-Stulp« (The Involution of the Universe) is a fulllength musical drama for nine singers, one actor and Ensemble Musikfabrik’s 17 instrumentalists. Its libretto is based on an eponymous novel by the German writer and graphic artist Eugen Egner, published in 1993. The subtitle (“a musical picture story”) alludes to graphic novels. Although Egner’s book is not a graphic novel itself, several visual aspects of our musical picture story have obvious references to the world of comics, as, for instance, the division of the stage into two panels and the integration of animated video sequences. Apart from visually perceptible affinities to comics, there are a number of aspects of its dramatic composition and narrative style which distinguish »Der Universums-Stulp« from common operatic concepts. Instead of developing and illuminating the psychologies of a more or less tragic configuration of protagonists, the audience is drawn into a wild vortex of onrushing events — an increasingly adventurous and audacious sequence of startling twists which descend upon the spectator in a Kafkaesque manner, much as they do upon the protagonist himself, TRAUGOTT NEIMANN. Another distinctive feature is the way in which the libretto is set to music. Notwithstanding the fact that the term „everyday speech“ would be utterly inadequate in the light of the bizarre events delineated in »Der Universums-Stulp«, the libretto remains comprised solely of direct, prosaic speech. First the libretto has been transformed into a basic acoustical form with proto-musical qualities. A number of voice recordings of the entire libretto were made, which became, in multiple ways, the substrucure for the actual compositional work. Although every vocal utterance is based on their meticulous transcription, these written representations of speech were converted for their performance on stage. In nuanced shadings each character employs a specific form of declamation and vocal manipulation. The blurring of boundaries between natural and synthetic and the entanglements of perception that ensue, generate a range of issues with which the composer has been engaged for many years, and which seem remarkably apt for the subject of this work. | Opernhaus Wuppertal (Ensemble musikFabrik) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 105 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Stephan Winkler | Peter Rundel | | Eugen Egner, Stephan Winkler, Thierry Bruehl | | Thierry Bruehl | Bart Wigger, Tal Schacham | Wiebke Schlüter | Johannes Blum | | Philippe Brühl | Henning Priemer | Paul Jeukendrup | | 7-Feb-2014 | Germany | Wuppertal | Opernhaus Wuppertal | 820 | Opernhaus Wuppertal: Kunststiftung NRW, Ensemble musikFabrik | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 54 | Petrograd | Kamerna Opera | Petersburg is a chamber opera written on libretto by Aleksandra Sekulić, based on Andrei Bely's novel Petersburg (English translation - Robert A. Maguire and John Malmstad, 1978, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press). It is in one act and is divided in Prologue, nine scenes and two Epilogues. There are no conventional roles in the opera. The main character is Narrator who tells the story – through speech and singing. The ensemble of eight singers represents the people of Petersburg (scolopendra - myriapoda). At certain points the singers come out from the ensemble and take the role of one of the characters. Libretto is made of excerpts of the novel arranged in a manner to create chronological development of the story. | Branka Popović | Opera | Black Box | 75 | English | Serbian | 0 | > 20 | Branka Popovic | Rade Pejčić | | Aleksandra Sekulic | Andreja Belog | Vera Obradovic | Gordana Pantelić | | | | Nebojša Petrović, Ivica Đorđević, Boško Prostran | Gordana Pantelić | Đorđe Petrović | | 19-Jun-2012 | Serbia | Belgrad | Dom Omladine | 500 | Jugokoncert, Dom omladine Beograd | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 55 | Herakles! | | Herakles! retells the myth of Hercules through a complex web of intersecting dramatic and musical allegories. Drawing specifically on various embodiments of cultural ‘demigods’, Herakles! invokes the spirits of Rock guitarists, Arnold Schwarzanegger, the Kabuki play Shibaraku, the Mortal Kombat video-game franchise, and the superhuman healing powers of the ‘Quack Doctor’ as portrayed in the traditional British Mummers play, amongst others. Binding all of this together is an audible sound and video ‘click track’. Made up of mostly bodily sounds this track serves to contain these wildly varying and conflicting influences in a tightly choreographed and synchronised framework. The piece positions these influences in stark, bathetic, contrast to one another, mixing high and low culture, classical and contemporary influences. The final movement of the work references the strange and arcane ‘Mummers’ folk play. Conflating many aspects of traditional English culture (music, maypole dancing, song-calling and the play itself), the movement draws heavily on the composer’s involvement in live art practices, as well as musical ones. Herakles! was written for, and developed with the ensemble ARCO. ARCO is made up of a number of musicians and artists from different backgrounds. Some players are classically trained contemporary-music specialists, some rooted in improvisation, some from rock and experimental backgrounds, and others from performance art and other practices. In this regard, the score and performance responds to the individual abilities of these players very closely, bringing together strictly notated music with graphic elements, improvisation, video, and text scores. Herakles! showcases some of Neil Luck’s collaborative partnerships. The film ‘Muscle Movie’ was created especially for the work by his frequent collaborator (and performer in Herakles!) Adam de la Cour. Also, the fight-scenes which are shown throughout feature footage of a performance created by Neil in collaboration with the renowned Tokyo based performance artist Takahiro Tomatsu. Herakles! was developed over 3 years, premiering in its complete form at Tête à Tête Opera Festival 2014 in London, before embarking on a UK tour. It has received support from a Help Musicians UK ‘Emerging Excellence. | Neil Luck, Tête à Tête Opera Festival | Other | Black Box | 50 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Neil Luck | Neil Luck | | Neil Luck | | | | | Mary Ann Hushlak | | Adam de la Cour | | | | 9-Aug-2014 | United Kingdom | London | Tête à Tête Festvial | 300 | Tête à Tête Opera Festival; Iris Theatre company | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 56 | YOU Are My Loneliness | | Loneliness is the best gift that God offers artists. Life itself is a lonely wander, walking alone, running alone, and keeping strong alone.You Are My Loneliness is about the music and life of Wang Luobin, the legendary Chinese song writer and collector, 'king of songs', featuring his original music including premiere of three songs never performed on stage before. This Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre production is touring extensively in China in 2016 and beyond. | Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre | Opera | Black Box | 90 | Chinese | | 0 | 11-20 | | Zhao Guang | | Nick Yu | | Zhou Xiaoqian | Jiao Ran | Dong Guiying | | Jiang Fan | | FengYancheng | | | 19-Mar-2015 | People's Republic of China | | | 200 | Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre | 2015 | Special Mention of MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 57 | LILITH | | Multy disciplinary performance about the tragic love story of Adam and his first wife. Classical singer Claron McFadden delivers an emotionally charged musical-theatre performance that combines classical music, jazz, sampling, theatre, film and poetry. In the lounge bar of the Hôtel du Paradis we meet a man who tells us about his lost love. A woman then arrives who starts to talk about her failed relationship. Slowly it appears that he is Adam and she is Lilith, Adam’s first wife in Jewish mythology, who was created as Adam’s equal. Lilith refused to submit to Adam, and finally decided to leave Paradise. They recount their tragic love story, ending in a dramatic finale. | Muziektheater Transparant | Performance | Black Box | 75 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Dimitar Bodurov | | | Carola Luther | | Claron MacFadden | | | | | Frans Weisz | | | | 16-Feb-2012 | Netherlands | Amsterdam | Holland Festival | 200 | Muziektheater Transparant, Holland Festival, Operadagen Rotterdam, Concertgebouw Brugge and Korzo Producties, KlaraFestival | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Gesang, Videokunst |
| 58 | Steal a Pencil for Me | | STEAL A PENCIL FOR ME is an opera in two acts about a true, fiercely optimistic and most unusual love story that takes place during the Nazi period. It is based on the book of the same title about Jaap Polak, a Dutch accountant, and Ina Soep, the daughter of a wealthy diamond manufacturer from Amsterdam. A story about the indestructibility of the life spirit and the power of humankind to survive adversity, STEAL A PENCIL FOR ME explores intimate concerns and private dramas alongside the epic horrors of the Holocaust. When Jaap and Ina first meet in 1943 at a party in Amsterdam, Jaap is instantly smitten. However, he is unhappily married to Manja, a mercurial and flirtatious woman. Ina’s sweetheart, Rudi, has recently been arrested, and she knows nothing of his whereabouts. When the Nazis begin deportations, Jaap, Manja, and Ina are sent to Westerbork, where they are assigned to the same barracks, and then finally on to the more brutal Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany. Even though Manja and Jaap are planning to divorce when the war is over, Manja becomes jealous of the love that grows between Jaap and Ina, and forbids them to speak or meet. The lovers resort to writing secret letters with pencil stubs discarded by the Nazis. Jaap and Ina survived the Holocaust. They were married for 68 years, living in Eastchester, New York. A distinguishing feature of their book of letters is how they allowed the story to unfold: their shortcomings and faults are just as easy to see as their nobility, and their honesty makes the story compelling and real. The Village Voice wrote that their story “offers a corrective to the sentimental prevailing notion that the Shoah only happened to saints.” A documentary on the Polaks was released in 2007 by director Michele Ohayon, and aired on PBS. Jaap and Ina Polak attended the two performances of the opera in 2013, and were thrilled to meet the cast and see their story portrayed on stage. They have since passed away: Ina at the age of 91 and Jaap at 102. Composer Gerald Cohen knew the Polaks for more than 25 years, as the cantor at their congregation. As the child of refugees from World War II–era Europe, Cohen had long had in mind the idea of writing an opera based in the time of the Shoah. It was after reading the Polaks’ book and seeing the documentary about them that he realized their story was the ideal basis for the opera he wanted to write, a perfect example of the human spirit in the midst of tragedy. | Gerald Cohen | Opera | Site Specific | 135 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Gerald Cohen | Ari Pelto | | Deborah Brevoort | | Beth Greenberg | | | Cori Ellison | | | | | Lynn Baker (Vocal coach) | 28-Apr-2013 | USA | New York | Jewish Theological Seminar | 350 | Jewish Theological Seminary New York | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 59 | Invisible Cities | | Imagine arriving at a train station and discovering a man singing beautifully to himself. But what if he were singing to 200 people all over the station who were listening to him, seven other singers, and a live orchestra via wireless headphones? That’s the concept behind Invisible Cities, an immersive opera experience, first premiered in Los Angles at the historic Union Station in 2013. Invisible Cities, presented by The Industry in partnership with the LA Dance Project allowed the audience to roam freely through an operating train station, pursuing individual characters or creating their own story. Set in LA's historic Union Station, the audience experienced the live performance via top-of-the-line Sennheiser wireless headphones with crystal-clear sound technology, surrounded by the uninterrupted everyday life of the station. Based on Italo Calvino’s beloved novel and hauntingly set by composer Christopher Cerrone, Invisible Cities is a 70-minute meditation on urban life, memory, and human connection. Director Yuval Sharon’s concept makes each audience member the protagonist of the experience in a transfigured view of everyday life. Choreographer Danielle Agami draws the audience into an uncannily intimate proximity to the LA Dance Project. Italo Calvino’s fantastical novel imagines a meeting of the emperor Kublai Khan at the end of his life with the explorer Marco Polo. Khan orders Polo to report on the cities in his empire, and Polo’s responses are flights of fancy, cities of the imagination and the mind. The opera depicts the meeting and describes three chimerical cities with a quiet stateliness that offers the audience a chance to contemplate the essence of travel, as well as our subjective experience of environment and time. The use of headphones makes this meditative experience a highly personal event for each and every spectator. Cerrone’s fragile, quiet score attempts to capture “decaying sounds” through the use of found objects as instruments and pre-recorded voices interweaving with live voices. In Yuval Sharon’s concept for an “invisible” production, all the singers will sing live in various spaces throughout the performance site, appearing and disappearing into the everyday fabric of the building. The instrumental music is a mixture of live and prerecorded performances. Invisible Cities was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Music and the subject of an Emmy-winning documentary produced by KCET. | Christopher Cerrone | Performance | Public Space, Moving Audience | 75 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Christopher Cerrone | Marc Lowenstein | | | Italo Calvino | Yuval Sharon | | E.B. Brooks | | Danielle Agami | | | E. Martin Gimenez | Sarah Krainin (Properties designer) | 10.19.13 | USA | Los Angeles | Union Station | 200 | The Industry, LA Dance Project | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Musik Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 60 | Georgia Bottoms | A Comic Opera Of The Modern South | Georgia Bottoms, A Comic Opera Of The Modern South is a musical stage work for 11 singers and 19 instrumentalists in three acts, two parts. The story is based on the 2011 book Georgia Bottoms by Mark Childress. The libretto was written by author mark Childress and composer Gregory Vajda in English. Georgia Bottoms is a true comic opera written in a contemporary theatrical and musical language. This is the story of a woman who seems to be the pillar of church and community but who is actually juggling a set of very flammable secrets. A fast paced comedy about scandalous private lives in the contemporary South, at an imaginary small town, Alabama in the frame of historic events like 9/11 and Hurricane Kathrina. | Huntsville Symphony Orchestra (Gregory Vajda) | Opera | Black Box | 75 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Gregory Vajda | Gregory Vajda | | Mark Childress | | David Gately | | | | | | | | | 21-Feb-2015 | USA | Huntsville | | 2000 | Huntsville Symphony Orchestra | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 61 | Operetka ("Operetta") | | "Operetta" is one of the most important works written over a period of 15 years by the renown contemporary Polish novelist and playwright Witold Gombrowicz. For the very first time, the title comes to live on the opera stage. Michał Dobrzyński, a prominent artist of young Polish generation took on the challenging task of composing the music and constructing libretto with a mesmerizing result. His musical concept has been carefully brought to live under a demanding baton of Przemysław Fiugajski, a conductor, harpsichordist and playwright himself. Dobrzyński’s "Operetta" owes much of its success to the coherent and clever stage direction by Jerzy Lach, who has been the managing director of Warsaw Chamber Opera since 2012. His efforts were further supported by a renowned choreographer Jarosław Staniek and Jerzy Rudzki, stage and costume designer with extensive experience in working with Polish dramatic theatres. The operatic incarnation of Gombrowicz’s drama allows to portray the real tragedy of enslavement of a modern man. The marriage of grotesque and absurd transforms the initially trivial laughter into a laughter through pain. The work expresses destructive nature of modernity using an operetta language. The compositor’s intention was to create a parody from a parody, behind which a distorted image of the present emerges. The juxtaposition of muted minimalistic set design and flamboyant costumes leads the attention of viewers towards the characters stuck in limitations, but attempting to free themselves. “The world of the drama is built around an operetta which is understood as triviality, pretentiousness, mental emptiness, as opposed to history - full of pathos, horror and pain that refers to nakedness as a frail hope of men.” – says Jerzy Lach, the director. | Warsaw Chamber Opera | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 75 | Polish | | 0 | > 20 | Michał Dobrzyński | Przemysław Fiugajski | | | | Jerzy Lach | Jerzy Rudzki | Jerzy Rudzki | | Jarosław Staniek | | | | | 9-Apr-2015 | Poland | Warsaw | Warsaw Chamber Opera | 159 | Warsaw Chamber Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 62 | Bar Code | A musical tragedy for five singers and piano | A small supermarket in a small city. For a long time there is nothing other than that supermarket: neither another shopping mall nor other people beside those who work or shop there. Actually the only one who still does her shopping at the supermarket is Ms Grausenbrecher. The four shop assistants are there just at her disposal: they supply the old lady with their fabulous products and snatch thereby her pension out of her pocket. However this last customer is anything but easy going: she is a nasty old quirky woman. The only one who knows how to deal with her, if any, is Mr Schumacher, sole male shop assistant of the supermarket. By the way, all his female colleagues als well as Ms Grausenbrecher glance lustfully at him… | Manuel Durão, Daniel Schmidt (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig) | Opera | Black Box | 75 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Manuel Durão | Manuel Durão, Damian Ibn Salem | | Daniel Schmidt | | Matthias Oldag | Matthias Oldag | Matthias Oldag | Hanna Kneißler, Lisanne Wiegand | Lynnda Curry | | | | | 5-Dec-2014 | Germany | Leipzig | Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy", Großer Probesaal | 99 | Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" LeipzigLeipzig | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 63 | La Passione de Simone (The Passion of Simone) | Chemin musical en quinze stations (Musical path in fifteen stations) | La Passion de Simone [The Passion of Simone] is about a woman’s attempt to find an example in the life French philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943) through her own life. She will try to retell it through her singing, and relive it in her flesh, in the likeness of the Evangelista in Bach’s Passions –the formal model of the piece, that allows each and everyone to experience this identification. Simone Weil has indeed, thanks to her wide erudition, drawn her inspiration from all Western and Eastern spiritual traditions, and truly committed herself to an ideal of sanctity, by putting ascetically her principles into practice, from the experience of working in a factory to the Spanish Civil War, until her untimely death, following the fast she observed out of solidarity for the starving people of Occupied France. This matchless work, which finds a universal scope through an individual’s destiny, was born from the collaboration between committed French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf and Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. The staging of the premiere, in Vienna in 2006, was by Peter Sellars, who contributed very much to the writing process: the work therefore bears the mark of his twofold social and spiritual interests, perfectly brought to life by Saariaho’s mysterious music. In its very form and conception, La Passion de Simone calls for a theatrical work, or in other words a spatial and dramaturgical approach to the music, in the tradition of oratorio: therefore not a theatre of costumes and scenery flats, but a theatre of the mind, (driven by dramaturgy, music and bodies), a theatre of contemplation, which could in contemporary language be called a theatre of remembrance. | La chambre aux èchos | Opera | Black Box | 75 | Frensh | | 0 | > 20 | Kaija Saariaho | Clément Mao-Takacs | | Amin Maalouf | | Aleksi Barrière | Pauline Squelbut | Liisa Nieminen | | | | Étienne Exbrayat | | | 14-Nov-2013 | Slovakia | Bratislava | O.P. Hviezdoslav City Theatre | 0 | La Chambre aux échos; Music Centre Slovakia, Festival de Saint-Denis | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 64 | The Gospel of Mary Magdalene | | Drawing on the Gnostic gospels, the canonical gospels, and over fifty years of New Testament scholarship, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene reimagines the story of Jesus through the eyes of its most substantial female character. At first, this Mary Magdalene, like so many moderns, searches for meaning and purpose in erotic love alone. But her entanglement with Jesus of Nazareth—as mentor, soulmate, and co-minister—teaches her to distinguish love from possession, even as it teaches him to see the moral dignity of women. I use Mary’s clashes with Jesus’s disciple Peter (minutely described in the Gnostic Gospels) to suggest how the personal politics within Jesus’ movement may have played out in their own place and time. And this opera imagines a version of Mary’s vision at Jesus’s tomb which—had it shaped the Christian story the way Peter’s version of it did— might have left us a radically, radiantly different Western world. The most startling premises of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene either hide in plain sight in the canonical gospels or enjoy widespread consensus among Biblical scholars. No evidence— none—indicates the Magdalene was a prostitute. But clues in Matthew, Mark, and Luke strongly hint that Jesus was seen as an illegitimate child. Theologians from John Dominic Crossan through Bruce Chilton shrug to agree that Jesus and Mary Magdalene may well have been sexually involved—see the Gnostic Gospel of Philip’s description of Mary as Jesus’ “consort,” its accounts of his constantly “kissing her on the mouth”—and the most recently translated Gnostic-era fragment has Jesus referring, unambiguously, to “my wife.” Peter’s resistance to women burns bright in the Gnostic Pistis Sophia and Dialogue of the Savior (in which Mary admits “I am afraid of Peter, for he hates me and all of my sex:”) and Peter’s intent to banish Mary—as well as Jesus’ mollifying counteroffer to “make (Mary Magdalene) male—” comprise the stark final verses of the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. The heart of this story, though, is Mary’s vision of Jesus at the tomb: thus, any Magdalene opera must account for that scene’s signal line, among the most bewildering rebuffs in literature. Mary, rapt, reaches for her risen beloved. “Noli me tangere” (“Do not touch me”) Jesus replies. This line, read in Latin, inspired a thousand paintings of a tearful grasping wench thrust aside by an angel bent on higher things: the very image of the Church’s ancient equation of women with sex and sin. But translate the line from its original Greek. Now you read “Do not hold on to me,” or “Let me go.” Disgusted dismissal becomes gentle plea: a Gnostic plea not to confuse person with message, flesh with spirit, possession with love. Might this be the point of the Magdalene legend? Might Noli me tangere crown a story in which a morally ambitious woman learns to distinguish love from need—and, so enlightened, tries to persuade her fellows not to confuse the message with the messenger, or inner transformation with tribal politics? By the fourth century, Christianity—now imperially triumphant—was carefully crafting its own master-narrative. Pointedly excluded from that narrative were the Gnostic Gospels, with their transformative visions of ethnic equality, of the soul-nourishing potential of sexual love; even, nascently, of the separation of church and state. At a moment when too many of us are still willing to use these stories to punish and exclude, rather than ennoble and unite, all of our fellow citizens, have we no need to re-examine these treasured but treacherous legends? Or might it be time to look again to The Gospel of Mary Magdalene? | San Francisco Opera | | | 140 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Mark Adamo | | | Mark Adamo | | Kevin Newbury | David Korins | Constance Hoffman | | | | | | | 19-Jun-2015 | USA | San Francisco | San Francisco Opera | 0 | San Francisco Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now |
| 65 | The Trial | | Synopsis:
On his 30th birthday Josef K. is arrested by an unknown authority for an unspecified crime. All his efforts to understand the charge are foiled. Those around him are deeply concerned that he is not taking the case seriously.
On the eve of his 31st birthday two men arrive for K. He goes with them and guides them through the town to a quarry. They place his head on a block and stab him through the heart. | Music Theatre Wales | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 140 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Philip Glass | Michael Rafferty | | Christopher Hampton | Franz Kafka | Michael McCarthy | Simon Banham | Simon Banham | | | | Ace McCarron | | | 10-Oct-2014 | United Kingdom | London | Royal Opera House | 0 | Music Theatre Wales; Royal Opera House, Theater Magdeburg, Scottish Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 66 | Dampenes Rejse (Journey of the fumes) | En livlig teenage-opera om grimme sager! (An opera for young people) | Audience: The opera aims at an audience of young people approx. between the ages of 11-14 preferably with their parents. // Musical and Dramatic intentions: The Journey of the Fumes is written specifically to be at eye- and ear-level with its audience. The story revolves around 14-year old Millie, and her development during the piece, from a vain teenage drama queen, to a young woman who is conscious of the world around her. The element of the environment and global pollution is especially important for the piece. It is the authors' hope that this very serious subject can be introduced to a young audience in a way that encourages reflection, and promote the fact that we all have our parts to play in this very important issue - however small that part may seem. Musically, the score includes many musical references to popular music, and the work should be able to be performed without a conductor. The keyboard player can act as "band-leader" and cue singers when necessary. There are also parts that have an improvisational aspect. Scene 4 (see excerpt pg. 22) the instruments and singers time their music to the dramatic staging. The keyboard's long sustained bass notes in this scene are soundscapes constructed by the composer. | Nordic Opera | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 70 | Danish | | 11 | 1-10 | Andy Pape | | | Thomas Pape | | Ina-Miriam Rosenbaum | David Gehrt | David Gehrt | | | | | | | 1-Nov-2014 | Denmark | | | 0 | Öresundopera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Kinder und Jugendstücke |
| 67 | Glare | | Glare is a psycho-drama chamber-play with elements of science-fiction which focuses on the relationships between four protagonists. As doubts surface about whether one of the characters is an artificial human, the opera debates reality and its perception, the authenticity of experience, and emotion. It asks what is real and how we can really know who we are. | Royal Opera House | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 75 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Søren Nils Eichberg | Geoffrey Paterson | | Hannah Dübgen | | Thaddeus Strassberger | Madeleine Boyd | Madeleine Boyd | | | | Matt Haskins | | | 5-Nov-2014 | United Kingdom | London | Royal Opera House | 0 | Royal Opera House London | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 68 | OSCAR | | ACT I: Oscar is out on bail awaiting the verdict. Queensberry has bribed two detectives to warn hotel managers against giving him a room. Bosie, under pressure from Oscar, leaves the country, but, portrayed by a dancer, he haunts Oscar's imagination throughout the opera. Oscar eventually finds shelter with Ada Leverson, also a writer and adored by Oscar who calls her Sphinx. She puts him up in the children's nursery where they are joined by their friend Frank Harris. At first the innocent gaiety of their surroundings brightens the mood. Drinks are served and playful repartee prevails. Then the influential Frank reveals that he has made arrangements for Oscar to abscond bail, flee the country and escape the inevitable guilty verdict. After much agonizing, especially over his two young children, Oscar refuses to run away. The only honorable course is to face his accusers. In what essentially becomes a show trial the nursery morphs into the courtroom and the toys enact the proceedings as farce. The "guilty" verdict is handed down and Oscar is sentenced to hard labor for two years. // ACT II: This act sees the prison warders sarcastically making their celebrity guest welcome, but a reality check is brutally provided by the sadistic governor, Isaacson, whose personal mission is to punish his charges to the furthest extreme. Oscar will be no exception. He is rapidly broken in body and spirit by the prison regime. In his feverish weakness he suffers a fall during chapel service and injures his head. In the face of rebellious protests by the other prisoners Isaacson grudgingly sends Oscar to the infirmary. In the infirmary Oscar is able to talk with other sick prisoners, discovering levels of simple humanity that restore his spirits. He realizes that there are greater degrees of suffering in life than he has ever imagined. We discover that there is soon to be an execution. During the night before it the tension inside the prison reaches a terrifying pitch as all feel the presence of Death in their midst. Oscar senses that this death prefigures his own. Nearing the end of his sentence, Oscar is visited by Frank Harris. Early release has been beyond Frank's political influence, but at least the authorities have decided to replace the tyrannical Isaacson with a more moderate governor who will allow Oscar writing materials, more books and to work in the garden. It is here that he receives his last visitor. Ada Leverson comes to discuss plans for his return to freedom. Alas, his request to join a closed Christian community has been refused. It will be some time before society is prepared to tolerate his return. Indeed, he will have to pass over to the next life before that process can truly begin. Walt greets Oscar on the threshold. | Santa Fe Opera, Opera Philadelphia | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 150 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Theodore Morrison | Evan Rogister | | John Cox, Theodore Morrison | | Kevin Newbury, | | | | | | | | | 27-Jul-2013 | USA | Santa Fe | Santa Fe Opera | 0 | Opera Philadelphia; Santa Fe Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 69 | Coup Fatal | | In Coup Fatal 13 musicians from Kinshasa, conducted by Rodriguez Vangama, are engaged with the repertoire of various baroque composers. The Congolese counter-tenor Serge Kakudji se-lected the arias. The original music is enriched with the diversity of the musicians. Around the vocal parts of Serge Kakudji, a whole new contemporary universe is created, both in music and image. This new music integrates in a natural and exuberant way the baroque phrases with tradi-tional and popular Congolese music, rock and jazz. The Brussels composer Fabrizio Cassol and guitar player Rodriguez Vangama are the musical directors, while director Alain Platel and dancer Romain Guion (C(H)OEURS etc.) search for a theatrical form together with the team. The set is designed in collaboration with the artist Freddy Tsimba. In Kinshasa he creates huge, disturbing sculptures of cartridge cases which he collects in Congolese war zones. Coup Fatal is inspired by the grand gestures of the perky ‘sapeurs’, the dandies of Kinshasa. No need to be ironical, the exuberance doesn’t have to be reduced. Against a background of car-tridge cases, movements have to be loud and big, the rawness provoking. Rather than a tribute to baroque music, Coup Fatal is a tribute to the unrelenting elegance of the Congolese. | Alain Platel; KVS & les ballets C de la B | Performance | Black Box | 105 | Various | | 0 | 11-20 | Rodriguez Vangama, Fabrizio Cassol et Coup Fatal after Händel, Vivaldi, Bach, Monteverdi, Gluck | Fabrizio Cassol | | | | Alain Platel | Freddy Tsimba | Dorine Demuynck | | | | Carlo Bourguignon | Max Stuurman | Serge Kakudji, Paul Kerstens (Idea) | 10-Jun-2014 | Austria | Vienna | Wiener Festwochen | 0 | les ballets C de la B & KVS; Théâtre national de Chaillot, Holland Festival, Festival d’Avignon, Theater im Pfalzbau Ludwigshafen, TorinoDanza, Opéra de Lille, Wiener Festwochen | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 70 | Winter's Journey | | Winter's Journey takes as its jumping off point a loose translation of 19th century German poet Wilhelm Muller's Winterreise cycle, which was famously set by Schubert for baritone voice and piano. The poems chronicle the journey of an unnamed traveler who sets off on foot from his village after being spurned by his lover. As the journey progresses his thoughts become more and more inward, exploring the vagaries of human connection, loneliness and finally the nature of existence itself. In contrast to Schubert's setting, Cuomo’s piece is scored for a mezzo-soprano singing in English, plus three onstage musicians: electronics and guitar (performed live by the composer); keyboards; and trumpet. | Music Theatre Group | Opera | Black Box | 80 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Douglas Cuomo | | | | | David Schweizer | | | | | Darrel Maloney | | | | 6-Jan-2013 | USA | | | 75 | Music-Theatre Group | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 71 | Dorian Gray | Musical Opera in three Acts | The opera‐musical 'Dorian Gray', based on Oscar Wilde's novel 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', tells the story of a narcissistic dandy whose good looks are preserved Roland Fister's music creates a bridge between opera and musical theatre. Arranged for symphony According to an enthusiastic review from Bayerische Rundfunk: "It is fascinating how Roland The German Press Agency DPA described the show as an "impressive musical adaptation", Due to public demand, 'Dorian Gray's' first run of performances stretched over two theatrical 35 age group. | Landestheater Coburg | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 108 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Roland Fister | Roland Fister | Lorenzo Da Rio | Roland Fister | Oscar Wilde | Bodo Busse | Michael Heinrich | Michael Heinrich | Susanne von Tobien | | | André Fischer | | | 8-Jun-2013 | Germany | Coburg | Landestheater Coburg | 490 | Landestheater Coburg | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 72 | Młoda mężatka (The Young Wife by Katarzyna Brochocka) | A One-Woman Comic Opera | "Young Wife" is a one-woman comic opera for coloratura soprano and piano. Plot is based on the semi-autobiographical novel "The Memoirs of a Young Wife" by Polish writer Gabriela Zapolska (1857-1921). Libretto was written and translated to English by the composer, Katarzyna Brochocka. Full of playful melodrama, The Young Wife is an account of a woman's rocky new marriage, performed through sung diary entries. The opera takes place in 1890s Poland, and tells the story of a skittish Young Wife, who discovers an unexpected way to deal with her snippy husband Julian (who married her just for her dowry), his giggling “lady-friend” Liza (who turns out to be his lover) and her own forbidden longings (her first love, Mr. Adam, whom she meets again after years). Zapolska has received the most recognition for her sociosatirical comedies. Echos of the themes she explored are still present in contemporary culture. "The Young Wife" except it's humorous side has a serious dramatic potential, it shows complexity of woman’s sensitivity and true insight into growing consciousness of a young woman, who was brought up in a beautiful dream, that suddenly turns out to be a real nightmare. The suffering is created mostly in her own head, and realization of that is what really frees her out of unhappiness, not the "Polish-Mother" stereotype, as it first may seem. The Washington production of "The Young Wife" was awarded 2013 Pick of the Fringe audience award in the best Music Theatre & Opera category. | Unmanned Stagecraft | Opera | Black Box | 60 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Katarzyna Brochocka | | | Katarzyna Brochocka | Gabriela Zapolska | Courtney Kalbacker | | | | | | Alison Hall | | | 14-Jul-2014 | USA | Washington | Fort-Fringe Redrum | 0 | Unmanned Stagecraft | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 73 | Music Impossible | A Shadow Music Theatre Performance | Music Impossible is a 'muted' (wordless) music and shadow theatre project, based on a child-friendly fairytale (a trilogy written especially for this project). It follows a group of "secret" instrumentalists who are trying to find their way in a strange modern world from which music has been forcefully evicted. The project’s realisation is inspired by the ancient Asian art (and its later South East European development) of the shadow puppeteers. In our "magnified" version of shadow theatre, the instrumentalists become the puppets for the fairytale's main characters, while the remaining roles are given to actual puppets. Through this process, the musicians acquire a second nature: their musical gestures (playing), enriched with non-musical ones (acting), are projected (along with the puppets) as shadows on a number of on-stage translucent screens. The performers acoustically and visually "narrate" the story without using spoken text; they support the dramaturgy, while also creating its sound and musical world. // The show begins with a conventional concert, that is supposed to be taking place at an earlier time, when music was still existing (a selection of pre-existing works is used in this section). However, the concert is being interrupted, and that brings us back to the present. Music has been banned for a long time, when Roger decided to move back to his family's house. He will then find a hidden part of what it seems to be a musical instrument, which will gradually lead him to other people with similar findings. All together, they will learn how to use their instruments and organise a concert. That will be the final battle with Scrouge (the dictator who banned music). | Gregory Emfietzis, Metapraxis Ensemble | Other | Black Box | 60 | | | 0 | 1-10 | Gregory Emfietzis | | | Myrto Loulaki | | Charlotte Ive | Ingrid Hu | | | | | | | Jo Lakin (Puppeteer) | 18-May-2013 | United Kingdom | London | | 60 | Metapraxis Ensemble, London Symphony Orchestra | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Puppen |
| 74 | ΠΡΟΜΗΘΕΑΣ ΔΕΣΜΩΤΗΣ (Prometheus Bound) | | "Prometheus Bound” by Panagiotis Karousos is an opera based on Aeschylus tragedy. In Greece Prometheus Bound presented at the Municipal Theatres of Athens, Salamina, Argostoli, Lixouri, Ithaca, Cholargos, Chalkis, at the Concert Hall of the Greek Writers, in “Parnassos” Concert Hall, in the Old Parliament House, at the Theatre Veakeio, and the Theatre “Jenny Karezi”. In 2013 bass Vasilis Asimakopoulos did unforgettable presentations of the opera as a director and leading role at the Little Theatre of Ancient Epidaurus, the Ancient Theatre Ekklesiasterion (Odeon) in Ancient Messene, the Ancient Agora at the Ancient Site of Acropolis, and the National Archeological Museum of Greece, and performed the main arias of the opera at “Parnassos” Concert Hall conducted by E. Kalkanis. Panagiotis Karousos is a renowned Greek-Canadian composer who brings to his music the philosophy and spiritualism of the Greek classics. He successfully presented all his operas (Prometheus, Olympic Flame, Alexander the Great, Light of Christianity) around major North American cities. His Symphony No.1 “Liberty” presented in New York with the Astoria Symphony and maestro Silas Nathaniel Huff. His Piano Concerto No.1 performed in Montreal Canada under the auspices of UNESCO in 2000. Also his Symphony No.2 “Olympic” performed in Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal with the OSJL-L Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Andre Gauthier. In February 2014 the Symphony Orchestra of the City of Athens conducted by E. Kalkanis premiered his Symphony No.4 “Earth”. Recently the opera Prometheus Bound represented in New York, Queens and United Nations Headquarters, Manhattan under the auspices of UNESCO. | Panagiotis Karousos | Opera | Black Box | 70 | Greek | | 0 | 1-10 | Panagiotis Karousos | | | | Aischylos | Vasilis Asimakopoulos | | | | | | | | | 30-Jul-2013 | USA | New York | Hellenic American Centre of the Arts | 2000 | Hellenic Center of the Arts; UNESCO Greece | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 75 | The Confidants | | An adaptation of the play, Confidants. The story speaks of Wu Zhaogian's exile due to the Jiangnan imperial examination case. His confidant, Gu Zhenguan, spent 20 years trying to rescue him. During this time Gu wrote the famous "Are you safe, my dear friend". This work is a marriage between Chinese opera and Kunqu Opera. Coupled with stage effects, this sensual delight is about to blow the audience away. | Taipei Li-yuan Peking Opera Theatre | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 150 | Chinese | | 0 | > 20 | Yao-Kuang Chung | Yao-Kuang Chung | | Qi-Hong Guo | | Bao-Chun Li | Wei-Wen Chang | Yu-Fen Tsei | | | | Chun-Yu Lee | | Shao-Yu Zhu & Sheng Li (Music and aria design), Yei-Sheng Wang (Media design) | 24-May-2013 | Taiwan, Republic of China | Taipei | Taipei Li-yuan Peking Opera Theatre | 781 | C. F. Koo Foundation | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 76 | Dnevnikot na ludiot (Diary of a Madman) | Mono-Opera | "Diary of a Madman” by N. V. Gogol is considered to be one of the earliest detailed record of schizophrenia, long before the disease got its recognition and name in the medical practice. However, Gogol’s short story doesn’t analyse the disease in the medical sense, but rather questions the world in which the individual strug- gles to make sense of his identity and social status. Gogol, in a lucid manner - through the disease of Poprishchin, speaks about the disease of the society and reminds us that all of us are in some kind of conflict with the reality. Which reality is more real? The one we read about in the newspapers, the one we observe in our immediate vicinity, or the one inside of us? While conflicts between East and West, left and right, religious and atheistic world outlooks become more and more intense, every person fights for his own normality and in this fight he is declared crazy. This chamber spectacle in duration of one hour, through music, video and theatre performance explores a distorted view of a low-ranking civil servant who is marginalized by the society and cast off as unwanted. // A word by composer and director Marjan Nećak: Spontaneity is a key segment when you start the creation. This was the way we created this mono-opera which includes many different musical styles and still heads down the road of the classical music work - the Opera... at the beginning in a form of an Overture and very quickly veering off the path changing into a Symphony of the mental, spiritual and emotional condition of the main protagonist. His captivity in himself, his inability and his sentences half-way composed by Gogol without the musical line wouldn’t sound so strongly and astonishingly no matter how successful the acting interpretation is. The music is like the water. While we sail on it, drink it and defend ourselves from it, we are wrapped in a unique acoustic garment without being aware of it. Having in front of me one multitalented, intelligent and curious actor, who I wrote this piece for, setting myself up to higher creative challenges I though that this actor can do it all, but he can not do nothing! You should give a lot to such an actor and he will give you too much so you should be proficient to choose the best! His musical and acting talent is something rarely found on the scenes in Europe. | Moving Music Theatre | Performance | Black Box | 60 | English, Spanish | Macedonia Language | 0 | 1-10 | Marjan Nećak | | | | Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol | Marjan Nećak | Marjan Nećak | | | | Marin Lukanović | | | | 10-Jun-2015 | Macedonia | Bitola | Centre of Culture | 100 | Moving Music Theatre | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 77 | Sezname, otevři se! (The List of Infinity) | | A semiologist by his original profession, Umberto Eco is a world-renowned novelist. He connected his love for theories and for art in his book The Infinity of Lists, a collection of lists that authors from Homer to nowadays have woven into their works. An infinite enumeration of ships that, according to Homer’s depiction, left to con- quer Troy is followed by a respectful genealogy of Jesus from the Gospels and a florid description of flowers from Émile Zola. We chose three literary lists, from Eco himself but also from the authors he loved the most (Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino), and we supplemented them with practical lists from our life, beginning with the alphabet. We added our own lists of words in which Eco’s leitmotifs are mirrored, such as mirror whose mirroring fascinates him as a source of further signs and meanings. We ourselves became addicted to lists, not only literary but also musical – the lists of chords, of harmonics, of sounds, of shades of piano and pianissimo. When it comes down to it, through the structure of lists it is possible to get a glimpse of the depth of infinity. | Boca Loca Lab (New Opera Days Ostrava) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 70 | Czech | | 0 | > 20 | Martin Smolka | Ondřej Vrabec | Jurij Galatenko | Jiří Adámek | J. L. Borgese, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco | Jiří Adámek | Ivana Kanhäuserová | Ivana Kanhäuserová | | | Kryštof Pešek, Ivana Kanhäuserová | | Otakar Mlčoch | | 26-Jun-2014 | Czech Republic | Ostrava | Antonín Dvořák Theatre | 500 | Ostrava Center for New Music; National Moravian-Silesian Theatre | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 78 | The Death By Fire Of Giordano Bruno | | The Death By Fire Of Giordano Bruno is an electronic chamber opera composed by Irish composer Roger Doyle, with a libretto by Jocelyn Clarke and directed by Eric Fraad. The music has been composed as a continuous pre-recorded electronic soundtrack, played through the sound system, together with 4 live musicians (piano, 'cello, woodwinds, electric guitar). The 5 singers all have radio microphones balancing their voices with the sountrack and acoustic instruments. They are: Boy soprano, mezzo soprano, counter tenor, high tenor and tenor (Bruno). As the music was composed on computer software it was not always possible to convey the sounds used by notation alone. Thus the 4 examples of the score supplied give only an idea of its skeletal nature. The relation of score to the video is: the opening music is obviously at the beginning. The Throne Room Of King Henry III starts at 1:42; and the opening of The Cell is at 14:30. This 23 minute scene represents Bruno's hallucinations the night before he was burned at the stake in 1600. Here he meets various Deities, James Joyce and his young self, among others. The Trial scene at the 9 minute mark was developed in rehearsal. The boy soprano solo is at 25:40 and represents Bruno meeting himslef as a young boy. The full cast list is in the Programme Book supplied. Further details are in the Synopsis. This video is from a 38 minute performance that was made in October 2013 at the Dublin Theatre Festival - presented in their 'in development' programme, and represents a single act from the opera. As mentioned elsewhere, we have just learned that we have received funding from the Irish Arts Council to complete this opera in a 90 minute version for full production in Dublin in November 2016. | Roger Doyle, Eric Fraad | Opera | Black Box | 38 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Roger Doyle | | | Jocelyn Clarke | | Eric Fraad, Roger Doyle | Zia Holly | Emma Downey | | | | Zia Holly | | | 5-Oct-2013 | Iralnd | Dublin | Samuel Beckett Theatre | 300 | META; Project Arts Centre Dublin, RTE Lyric FM | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 79 | Jab Molassie | | Jab Molassie is a Trinidad & Tobago adaptation of Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat. It is a music-theatre performance piece written for 5 voices, 9 musicians and 1 dancer. Jab Molassie is a universal tale which explores themes relevant to contemporary society. The story presents the dilemma faced when confronted with sacrificing values in exchange for gain, but at a price. This new work premiered at the Little Carib Theatre in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago from November 6-9, 2014. // The story is set in Trinidad where a corporal, interpreted in two voices, male and female, narrates the tale of Starboy, a gifted musician with a bright future who unwittingly sells his soul, represented by his violin, to Jab Molassie, whose character is also interpreted in two voices, one male and one female. Imagining that in exchange for his instrument he will gain all the riches promised to him by Jab Molassie and his magic book of gambling tips, Starboy cannot predict the heavy price he will pay for this exchange. Nor does he imagine that he will be lost forever... or will he? The piece is 55 minutes long and the set is designed to be portable. // The creation and development of Jab Molassie took place over a four year period between 2010 and 2014. The libretto was originally intended to be set to Stravinsky’s music, however in 2011 the librettist, Caitlyn Kamminga, met Trinidad and Tobago born composer Dominique Le Gendre and the idea developed between them that Le Gendre would write original music inspired by Stravinsky. The need to fund the creation of this and future works led to the formation of Calabash Foundation for the Arts in 2012. CFA formally commissioned Dominique Le Gendre to write original music for Jab Molassie in November 2012. The work was developed through two workshops in January and May 2013. A vital aspect of all stages of the development of Jab Molassie is that students of the University of Trinidad and Tobago benefitted through apprenticeships and understudy roles inclusive of credit applicable in their degree programme. The creative team behind Jab Molassie has envisaged the work not only as a piece of art that is entertaining, but also as a portable work suitable for secondary school students across the Caribbean and in diaspora based communities internationally. A music education pack is part of the material that has been developed. Project website: www.jabmolassie.com | Calabash Foundation for the Arts | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 55 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Dominique Le Gendre | Ian Shaw | | Caitlyn Kamminga | | Patricia Cumper | Kathryn Chan | Kathryn Chan | | Dave Williams | | Benny Gomes | Robin Foster | | 6-Nov-2014 | Trinidad and Tobago | Port of Spain | Little Carib Theatre | 200 | Calabash Foundation for the Arts | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 80 | Le rêve de Grégoire (Gregor's Dream) | | The opera takes place the night before Gregor’s execution. He doesn’t know why he was arrested. Lying in his cell, exhausted, he falls asleep and in his dreams relives his entire life, distorted as though reflected back to him from a warped mirror: his childhood, his education, his work, the limitations placed on his critical thinking. To add to his confusion, Gregor is accompanied in his dreams by guides stemming from the humanist tradition: Petrarch, Dante, Erasmus, Rabelais, Camus… all worried about the destiny which awaits them and their only living heir. His death would signify their death. Following Felliniesque logic, all these scenes quickly transform into nightmares and Gregor awakes many times in his cell. A little girl, the incarnation of Mathilda in Dante’s Divine Comedy, keeps him company in the hallway of his death through a little door used to give him food. She will give Gregor the confidence he needs to confront his fate. In the final scene, the soldiers come to get Gregor at dawn for his execution by firing squad. The general asks for his final words. Gregor quotes La Rochefoucauld: «He who lives without folly isn’t as wise as he thinks.» The general screams: «Fire!» Le rêve de Grégoire (Gregor’s Dream) has ended, and now the metamorphosis can begin… Le rêve de Grégoire (Gregor’s Dream) begins with an arrest. In his cell, a man awaits his execution. He has no idea what he might have done to deserve such a fate, but whether he finds out or not, it won’t change his situation. He will die. Or maybe not. But why? Le rêve de Grégoire is a fable. A fable about our world. A savage fable, maybe even a desperate one. But certainly not a defeatist one. A fable which asserts: “There is something in me that power and authority, no matter how absurd or out of control, can never destroy.” | Chants Libres | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 75 | Frensh | | 0 | > 20 | Pierre Michaud | Walter Boudreau | | Pierre Michaud | | René-Daniel Dubois | Gabriel Tsampalieros | Marianne Thériault | | | | Guy Simard | | | 15-May-2014 | Canada | Monteal | Monument National | 804 | Chants Libres; Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 81 | Turbulence or ‘the underlying forces usually hidden’ | A Living Room Opera in three scenes | TURBULENCE is a chamber opera involving an all-female cast, consisting of a Mother (soprano), Daughter (actor), and the voices of a female pilot, flight announcer and baby. Framed in live performance by boarding procedures and meditative take-off sequence, the opera is set high in the sky in an airline passenger cabin. The opera plays out as a musical drama between the two main characters, in three scenes, with pre-recorded and live electronic effects propelling the drama forward. The parallel monologues of the singing mother and her speaking daughter tilt, interweave, and collide; at times their articulations in the white-noise spectrum seem to be their only common language. This charged sonic environment includes the popping and rushing of an unreliable flight intercom system, an amplified transistor radio, a hand-luggagesized synthesiser, and the aria ‘For those who are near you are far away’, with its soaring opening line, ‘Sky as blue’. In 2015, a film version of TURBULENCE was created by Sydney-based artist Peter Humble, using the sound recording from the original production (podcasted by ABC Classic FM). The film version was created for the e-book LIGE, released on 2nd June 2015 by the Danish Arts Agency and Danish Ministry of Equality in collaboration with the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. LIGE celebrates the 100th anniversary of the achievement of female suffrage in Denmark, presenting projects by 20 artists whose work addresses the cultural politics of gender front-lines today in a variety of media. To view the 2015 film version on this platform, please go to http://lige-kunst.dk/ and click on the left hand side of the screen to reveal the Table of Contents and then click on Chapter XIV – Juliana Hodkinson. | Chamber Made Opera | Performance | Site Specific | 45 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Juliana Hodkinson | | | Cynthia Troup | | David Young | | | | | Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty | | | | 3-Oct-2013 | Canada | Melbourne | Private living room | 30 | Cahmber Made Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 82 | Thumbprint | | THUMBPRINT, a 90-minute contemporary opera-theatre work by Kamala Sankaram and Susan Yankowitz, is inspired by the experiences of Mukhtar Mai, the first female victim of gang rape to bring her male attackers to justice in Pakistan. In lieu of a financial settlement, Mai requested the construction of schools for girls. She hoped to educate the young to help prevent the humiliation of signing their name with only a thumbprint. The libretto originates from a series of interviews with Mai, and explores the deep family ties and tribal traditions that led up to an astonishing act of courage. The score is a dynamic collision of Hindustani and European opera influences with an ensemble of six singers and six instrumentalists, featuring flute, violin and viola, upright bass, piano/harmonium, and percussion (drums, dhol, and tabla). | Kamala Sankaram, Susan Yankowitz, Rachel Dickstein | Opera | Black Box | 90 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Kamala Sankaram | Steven Osgood | | Susan Yankowitz | | Rachel Dickstein | Susan Zeeman Rogers | Kate Fry | | | | Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew | Matthew Schloss | | 10-Jan-2014 | USA | New York | HERE Arts Center | 190 | Beth Morrison Projects | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Musical |
| 83 | Exposure Berlin | | A journey through Surrealism and silent film, Exposure Berlin is a musical excursion through 1920’s French surrealist theater, and German expressionist silent film. It blurs the lines between reality and a dreamworld of nightmarish distortions. The piece questions the danger of physically stepping out of the skin, venturing beyond social constraints, in a backdrop overshadowed by the tension between conformity and jeopardy in the time of the impending Second World War. Through the theatrical synthesis of film and an orchestra both avant-garde and operatic, Exposure Berlin revives the long abandoned Delphi Theater to its historic glory of the 1920’s. This once-popular spot has been closed to the general public since 1959, and with this show Berlin has the opportunity to enjoy the magical space again. We are welcomed into the bedazzled realm of 1920’s splendor by two ushers and the lovely opera singer Paris, performing a cabaret style number. Then, a siren screams: a bomb that sends us not to our death but abruptly spirals us into a surrealist dream in which a woman from the audience becomes a man and her husband gives birth to 40,049 babies - his own army. The “Husband” is drunk with the power of being “creator”. But what does such radical “emancipation” beyond norms lead to? Dissecting the answer only leads to madness. Our once entrusted guides into the Roaring Twenties, the ushers, are now mute prisoners, stuck inside a silent film. The fleeting phantom of the Delphi Theater resurfaces with opera arias of riddling advice, condemnation and a genderless form that fuels the struggle to make sense of a senseless world. Exposure Berlin is based on Les Mamelles de Tirésias, a 1917 play by G. Apollinaire for which the playwright first created the word “surrealist”, to describe radical and theatrical distortion. Inspiration for Exposure Berlin is vested in Apollinaire’s vision to stir cultural preconceptions of gender and conformity. The surrealist performance catapults the audience into the tension between empowerment through selfdetermination and the powerlessness of socio-cultural “reality”. The disruptive switch of language throughout the performance is a surrealist means to question understanding and communication itself. This multimedia production is the manifestation of two years of creative collaboration and immersed study of surrealism and expressionism, to create new forms as a means to rattle contemporary preconception which still resonates. | Nikolaus Schneider | Opera | Black Box | 80 | German, English, French | | 0 | 11-20 | Pucinski | | | Antoine Hummel | | Nikolaus Schneider | Victor Labarthe | Odile Hautemulle | Franziska Oehme | | Jake Witlen | Nandini Bhattacharya, Viktor Francis | Hendrik Kussmann | Radha Mateva (Video animation), Mitja Thomas (Live camera) | 12-Oct-2012 | Germany | Berlin | Ehemaliges Stummfilmkino Delphi | 450 | Per Aspera e.V. | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 84 | Jetzt (Now) | | JETZT tries to tell the history of thought in a poetological way. Human being in relation to nature and his surrounding is in constant change. Man is re-inventing himself again and again by inventing new descriptions of himself and his surrounding. By those descriptions we can observe the changes in the past human history. It’s the transformation of language use through human history which is the subject matter of this opera. Seven epochs are chosen. Short scenes about death interconnect those seven epochs. | Opéra Nationale Montpellier | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 60 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Mathis Nitschke | Carl Christian Bettendorf | Noelle Geny | Jonas Lüscher | | Urs Schönebaum | Urs Schönebaum | Yashi Tabassomi | | | | | | | 30-Nov-2012 | France | Montpellier | Opéra Nationale Montpellier | 2000 | Opéra National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillion | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 85 | Solarize | Opera kameralna | Solarize a one act opera on the subject of Leon Botha, the South African DJ, who had Progeria, ageing 8 times faster than the regular rate. BIO wirtten by his own: Leon Botha was born on the 4th of June, 1985. Brought up and still living in Cape Town, South Africa. He started drawing at the age of three. And was diagnosed with progeria around the age of 4 years.He did not receive any formal training, and did not study art any further. In 2005 he underwent heart bypass surgery having been at critical risk of heart attack, due to Progeria, which calcified his arteries. This was successful and he hosted his first solo exhibition in January, 2007 at the Rust-en-Vrede gallery in Durbanville. It was called: "Liquid Sword; I am HipHop", and revolved around HipHop culture, explained as a way of life. It received great responses, as well as media coverage. Television, radio, magazine and newspaper articles and interviews. Hinting at the artist's attitude and alchemical philosophy, and struggles under Progeria. It featured a large spectrum of more dark, personal as well as spiritual work. The responses and media coverage grew even more than before and sold a third of the entire collection of 33 paintings under the first week. Many of the articles, images of the paintings etc. are to be found on his flickr page. A video clip of a news insert about the opening of the second exhibition can be found on youtube. In the beginning of 2010, he hosted the first showing of: "Who Am I? ...Transgressions," a photographiccollaboration exhibition with friend and photographer Gordon Clark. In which they collectively conceptualized images and shots to reveal Leon Botha to the world, which was a bold step due to the nature of his condition, of which he is currently one of the world's oldest survivors. 'Who am I? ... Transgressions' aimed at stereotypes, ideas of time, life and death and immortality. This exhibition is planned to travel around the world. Again, it received a lot of attention, locally as well as internationally. Leon is well known for his spiritual outlook and philosophy in interviews. ?He also dj's under the name Solarize, and occasionally opened for Die Antwoord. Botha was featured alongside Ninja, in the music video 'Enter the Ninja', from Die Antwoord. As of March 2010 the video had received over 2 million views on Youtube. | Grand Theatre Warsaw | Opera | Black Box | 67 | Polish | | 0 | 11-20 | Marcin Stańczyk | Marta Kluczyńska | | Andrzej Szpindler | | Krzysztof Garbaczewski | Aleksandra Wasilkowska | | | | | Robert Mleczko | | | 26-Apr-2014 | Poland | Warsaw | Grand Theatre Warsaw | 300 | Grand Theatre Warsaw | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 86 | The Whisper Opera | | Featuring a world-premiere chamber opera by David Lang, commissioned by ICE with Tony Arnold as solo soprano, this one-of-a-kind work is performed with the musicians, singer, and audience enclosed in an intimate, onstage set. Composed for flute, clarinet, percussion, cello, and solo soprano, the music and the environment work together to convey themes of secrets, and the tension between what we hide and what we choose to reveal. "the whisper opera" (2013) is inspired in part by Lang's visits to rural Italy, where he was surprised to experience the powerful intimacy of small opera houses. Jim Findlay directs the work and creates the particular stage design needed for the intimate setting of "the whisper opera." Findlay is an influential and provocative force as a designer and director in New York's experimental theater world, including collaborations with The Wooster Group. // The Whisper Opera is intended to be experienced only as a live, theatrical event. To this end it is expressly forbidden to record, amplify, video, film, or in any other way transmit visual or audio information about the whisper opera. | Project-based ensemble (International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE)) | Opera | Black Box | 65 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | David Lang | | | David Lang | | Jim Findlay | Jim Findlay | | | | | Christopher Kuhl | | | 30-May-2013 | USA | Chicago | Museum of Contemporary Art, MCA Stage | 0 | International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 87 | Kannst du pfeifen, Johanna (Can you whistle, Johanna) | | Based on the children’s book of the same name by Ulf Stark, KANNST DU PFEIFEN, JOHANNA (Can You Whistle, Johanna), which won the German Prize for Children's Literature, Gordon Kampe (libretto: Dorothea Hartmann) tells the story of a boy, Berra, and his wish to have his own granddad. So, together with his best friend, he goes to the old folk's home, because there must be a granddad for him in a place with so many old people. Thematically, the piece deals with questions about friendship, family, death and mourning. They are dealt with completely earnestly and without any sentimentality – but nonetheless in a manner suitable for children, while also retaining the positive and life-affirming essence of the play. Gordon Kampe manages to capture the piece’s changing mood, which shifts between the temperament of youth and nostalgic melancholy, by candidly bringing contemporary music together with echoes of waltzes, tango, Baroque arias and the German pop song Kannst du pfeifen, Johanna. Highly unusual instruments like a cactus, an electric shaver and tin cans are used for this, which stimulate the child’s imagination with a tapestry of sounds. Kampe uses the voice equally as undogmatically and diversely, allowing opera singing to grow out of speaking and song sections like the German pop song or birthday songs. KANNST DU PFEIFEN, JOHANNA takes its young audience seriously by both offering them aspects familiar to them, but without pandering to supposedly typical children’s listening habits. This has resulted in a new piece of children’s and youth theatre that transcends style and genre, and, with its challenging themes and high level of quality in composition, provides an easy introduction to the fascination of music theatre. | Deutsche Oper Berlin | Opera | Black Box | 60 | German | | 6 | 1-10 | Gordon Kampe | Kevin McCutcheon | | Dorothea Hartmann | Ulf Stark | Annechien Koerselman | Claus Stump | Claus Stump | Anne Oppermann | | | | | | 30-Nov-2013 | Germany | Berlin | Deutsche Oper Berlin, Tischlerei | 200 | Deutsche Oper Berlin; Saarländisches Staatstheater | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Literaturbearbeitung, Kinder und Jugendstücke |
| 88 | Happy Happy | An Operatic Song Cycle with Party | There is no alternative. The public debate is under the seal of fatalism. There is no other objective than that of universal restrictions. The economy, the climate, overpopulation – the next catastrophe lies in wait at every bend. Minute by minute, the modern media feed us bad news. We know we should act but we feel powerless. We reduce our sphere of activity. We cease asking for anything whatsoever. We retreat into our shells. The link that would constitute values other than economic ones is missing. What might we do? Happy Happy shows us a society in which efficacity has become the determining value. It is a matter of favouring the formation of synapses as early as possible. Schooling is shortened, studies must be useful, work better organized. Music and the muses have lost their freedom of mind as well as their playful innocence and find themselves reduced to the simple functions to fulfil: they serve for learning more efficiently, communicating more efficiently, relaxing more efficiently, and procuring a real life more efficiently. Music has lost its self-worth. Life, too, perhaps. Happy Happy brings together, in a sort of cabinet of wonders, impressions, quotations and scenes to become the plea for autonomy and co-humanity. Going back to the origins of Greek theatre, the play, written for a singer and a chorus, explores, in so doing, the connection between individual and crowd. It turns out that the person’s singing gets lost in the hot-tempered aspiration of the multitude at the celebration. And life goes on, ‘Happy Happy’. | Opéra Nationale Montpellier | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 65 | English, French, German | | 0 | > 20 | Mathis Nitschke | Arno Waschk | Noelle Geny | | | Urs Schönebaum | | | | | | Dan Large | | | 19-Nov-2014 | France | Montpellier | Opéra Nationale Montpellier | 800 | National Opera Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 89 | Folie à Deux (Madness between two) | | Part staged performance, part concept album, Folie à Deux is a lyrical and intense investigation into love and loneliness in a relationship. Folie à Deux is a collaboration between British composer Emily Hall, Icelandic writer Sjón and features vocals from Swedish jazz artist Sofia Jernberg and Icelandic tenor Finnur Bjarnason. The idea for the narrative was triggered by a conversation between Emily Hall and Dr Lisa Conlan, a Psychiatrist at London’s Maudsley Hospital, about a rare psychotic syndrome known as folie à deux - in which symptoms of a delusional belief are transmitted from one individual to another. The intricately crafted songs are woven together for two singers, an acoustic harp and an electro-magnetic harp. This newly created instrument uses vibrating magnets to evoke an underlying electronic presence representing the pylon – the third character that presides over this story. The striking image of a harp with wires attached creates a powerful visual analogy to the pylon. This is emphasised by a new lighting technique developed with Lighting Designer Dan Large, which uses a projector as the main source of light and responds live to the sounds and movements of the performers. Against a backdrop of responsive light and sound, the result is a hauntingly beautiful soundscape which takes its influences from many musical idioms ranging classical, jazz, pop and folk. “On this monochrome stage cut with thin beams of grey light Jernberg and Bjarnason conjure a world of doomed love, murder and loss. Jernberg's vocal performance is stunning, a voice that can go from soulful pop song to operatic in an instant... an odd musical fairy tale, a love song gone wrong.” The Quietus The production premiered at Borealis Festival, Bergen in partnership with Bergen National Opera in March 2015, followed by performances in Stockholm, Winchester, Aldeburgh and Spitalfields Music Summer Festival, London. Further performances in 2015 are planned including the London Jazz Festival. The piece will be released as a studio album in July 2015 by the record label Bedroom Community. Download the album here http://www.bandcamp.com/yum, using 667b-35md. Mahogany Opera Group is one of the UK’s leading independent opera companies. We create new opera in new ways, in different spaces and places throughout the UK and internationally. Drawing on a range of cultural influences, art forms and technologies we aim to stretch the boundaries of what opera can be and who it is for. | Mahogany Opera Group | Opera | Black Box | 50 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Emily Hall | | | Sjón | | Frederic Wake-Walker | | | | | | | Sound Intermedia | | 3-Nov-2015 | Norway | Bergen | | 80 | Mahogany Opera Group | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 90 | Frankenstein | | Our Frankenstein production - unlike film adaptations - goes back to the roots of the original novel, but uses a new contemporary 'post dramatical' text, with quotations of other philosophical works, jokes, wikipedia, the Bible, songs etc. It uses different performative styles in search of all possible points of views of the problems offered by the original story. Frankenstein's creature finds himself in a post-modern world, with our post-modern problems, confronted with the new function of the family, the common problems of finding our own ways of living - in a world where we - other human beings - are also suffering from the loss of a 'centre' and meaning in our lives. A live band on stage (violin, cello, effected bass and drum set) plays music in an eclectic yet easy to recognize style, affects and creates atmospheres breathing strongly together with the acts and motions. Actors speak in microphones in the most intimate scenes. In spite of the use of Brecht's 'V-effects' the audience are able to go with the characters in their passionate story, although these effects give them the possibilities every time to stop and think about the happenings. That's why our performance was called in one of the reviews: "a passionate philosophy lecture". | National Theatre Szeged Hungary | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 120 | Hungarian | | 0 | 11-20 | | | | Gabor Hollos | Mary Shelley | Gabor Hollos | Janos Mira | Gabor Hollos | | | Gabor Hollos | | | | 6-Mar-2015 | Hungary | Szeged | National Theatre Szeged | 350 | National Theatre Szeged Hungary | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 91 | A Petal | | A Petal is a play presented by Studio Bahn, a theater company in Korea, based on the original play ‘Hotel Splendid’ by American play writer, Lavonne Mueller. It is about the Korean comfort women, who were forced to serve the Japanese army during World War Ⅱ. Mueller wrote the play for years after she heard about them during her visit in Japan. The play depicts the young girls whose lives were ravaged severely by Japanese army and forced to be sex slaves. 'Hotel Splendid' was the real name of a barrack. Studio Bahn adapted the play as a form of interdisciplinary art theater. It is a story of a war which should not break out again and also of a violence which has hurt the world. describes the true picture of the horrendous days of the comfort women in World War Ⅱ. It seems that lots of people are indifferent to the history of the past. The play tells us about the universal violence as well as the issue of Korean comfort women. sheds new light on this matter with visual performance features to help audience experience the cruel reality and the pain the girls suffered through the play. Director Lee shows the text through the images and movements. He uses Korean jars on the stage to symbolize the body of the woman. The powder of various colors was used to show each character's feelings. The sound of breathing is notable through the whole play. The breathing, natural and primitive sound of human, shows the girls' appalling lives. Audiences can feel grotesque mood from their movements, facial expressions and also the alternations of the light and darkness. Act Ⅰ is mainly about the body. The comfort women's desperate days are shown through the actors' movements. Act Ⅱ is more about the spirit. Through the girls' talk, we can hear the stories of their lives and the thoughts they have in mind. They chat in a well side, and the water is used as a significant objet for washing their bodies. Director Lee is planning to develop the part of the projection images, dance as a movement and interactive part also. | Studio Bahn | Performance | Black Box | 90 | Korean | | 0 | 1-10 | Yang Heeyun | Yang Heeyun | | | Lavonne Mueller | Lee Kangsun | Choi Youngeun | Lee Hyunji | Choi Youngjoo | Yang Eunsuk | | Lee Dongjin | Ko Byungil | | 17-Apr-2015 | South Korea | Seoul | National Theater of Korea | 100 | Studio Bahn | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now |
| 92 | Meilan Music | | As a pioneer in China, Meilan Pops Orchestra (MLPO) was founded in 2013 by Sui Xiaofeng, a celebrated and productive composer and music producer in China, with members of instrumentalists and composers who are well-known both in China and in the world. MLPO combines traditional orchestra with electronic and world ethnic instruments. And with multimedia technology, it brings you into a colorful and very special sound world. MLPO has been always seeking originality and innovation in sound effect and technology. Huge investments has been made for the most advanced terminal system and peripheral equipments to establish a fully automated, real-time and by-timecode synchronization of live performance, audio, lighting and video systems. With the Digital Clock Synchronization System and Real-time Automation System, MLPO presents perfect stage effects to the audience. Meilan is the name of Sui Xiaofeng’s mother. Meilan Music was born to commemorate his mother. It is universal. It has no predetermined styles and genres. The only pursuit of Meilan Music is to combine the most beautiful sound in this planet, to convey the purest goodness and beauty of the human beings and to show Sui’s respect for the art of music. | Meilan Pops Orchestra | Other | Proscenium Stage | 90 | No Language | | 0 | > 20 | Sui Xiao Feng | Sui Xiao Feng | | | | | | | | | | | | | 20-Oct-2013 | People's Republic of China | | | 1200 | Guang Zhou Meilan Music.co | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 93 | MUSICOPHILIA | Tales of Music and the Brain | In 2012, Meta Theater created a much praised piece of music theatre after Oliver Sacks' best-seller „Musicophilia“ which assembles Sacks' exciting, precise observations on the nature of the human response to music. Sacks touches on the creating or listening to music, deals with the categories of harmony, the area that exists between sound and music, and of course the processes in the brain that involve the other senses. Our project „Musicophilia“ is based on nine selected case studies of this book. We present people falling out of their „normality“ due to neurological diseases. Their perceptions, captured so vividly by Sacks, are the starting point for our artistic journey combining music, video, light and theatre to guide the audience through a series of breath-taking experiences concerning „music and the brain“ (which is the book's subtitle). There is for instance a composer who through an accident loses her capacity for polyphonic hearing. From then on, she perceives the four voices of a string quartet as four sharp laser beams. Or the student manically translating whole lectures into songs because her brain memorizes the spoken word as music. There are patients suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia who learn to master their everyday lives with the help of music. There are four performers on stage - two musicians, a singer and an actor – moving in and out of these studies, translating these phenomena into poetic images, into sounds, music and theatrical action. Thus the audience can experience what it means when the senses run riot. What is normal? When does strangeness turn pathological? Steffen Wick and Simon Detel have composed the music, using unusual instruments such as a toothbrush. Stefano di Buduo has created hypnotic video sequences. The audience is invited to meet real or at least realistic, yet strange characters. There is Sacks himself and several of his patients, impersonated by the two musicians and the singer /actress. Advanced neurological knowledge is presented through unexpected perspectives, colours, movements and sounds, making it an entertaining, satisfying and aesthetically pleasing evening, which provides food for thought long after the lights have come back on. „They have found long lasting images.“ (SZ) | Meta Theater Munich | Opera | Black Box | 70 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Steffen Wick | | | Norbert Niemann | Oliver Sacks | Axel Tangerding | Norbert Niemann | Gudrun Hanke | Gabi Sabo | | Stefano Di Buduo | Stefan Staub | Simon Detel | Prof. Arno Villringer (Neurologist, Consultant) | 15-Nov-2012 | Germany | Munich | Reaktorhalle | 200 | Meta Theater Munich | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 94 | WOTH (Weighing of the Heart) | | With WOTH (Weighing of the Heart), the highly individual musician Liesa Van der Aa is seeking a way through the moral chaos of our polyphonous world. Judgements whizz through the virtual air, but the voice that once dictated the boundary between good and evil has fallen forever silent. Liesa expresses a generation’s search for answers and structures against a backdrop of constant excess. What is a good life? She found the inspiration for this first creation of her own in an ancient Egyptian ritual that has a moving simplicity. After death, each individual’s heart is put in the balance opposite the feather of truth: too heavy, too light, or in equilibrium? The Egyptian Book of the Dead provides the visual background for an overwhelming musical performance. Liesa’s angular music balances between fragility and bombast, the individual and the masses: one voice, one violin, eight musicians, a 42-voice chorus. Video and animated film by Frederik Jassogne and Guy Cassiers. | Liesa Van der Aa | Performance | Black Box | 105 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Liesa Van der Aa, Peter Spaepen, Daniella Strasfögel, Katrin Lohman, Hannes d'Hoine | | | Liesa Van der Aa, Katrin Lohmann | | Liesa Van der Aa | Joé Ageman | Anja Perisic | | | Liesa Van der Aa, Hangaar (Frederic Jassogne & Bart Moens), Guy Cassiers, Afreux beeldfabriek | Ken Hioco | Roel Snellebrand | Liesa Van der Aa, Jon Birdsong, Lambert Colson, Nathan Wouters, Diederik
De Cock, Boris Wilsdorf, Katrin Lohmann, Hannes D’Hoinne, Ephraim Cielen, Sjoerd Bruil (Arrangement) | 4-Dec-2014 | Belgium | Antwerp | deSingel Internationale Kunstcampus | 350 | Louisa’s Daughter vzw; deSingel, Internationale Kunstcampus, Muziektheater Transparant, Toneelhuis, Handelsbeurs | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Performance, Videokunst |
| 95 | Territoria | | A total experience on the border between art, stop motion animation, music, acting and text Territoria arises from the shared fascination of theater maker An De Donder, visual artist and designer Freija Van Esbroeck and scenographer Erki De Vries for the music of Wim Henderickx. Territoria is the story of a woman who roams in a labyrinth of dreams and desire, fears and memories. The suggestive and volatile music of Wim Henderickx’s string quartets Om, In Deep Silence III and The Seven Chakras provides the basis for the complete experience. Territoria is an exciting encounter between the visual arts, stop motion animation, music, acting and text. | An De Donder, Erki De Vries, Freija Van Esbroeck | Performance | Black Box | 75 | Dutch | | 0 | 1-10 | Wim Henderickx | | | Paul Verrept, Georges Perec | | An De Donder, Erki De Vries, Freija Van Esbroeck | | | | | | Peter Quasters | Bart Celis | Paul Delissen (Animation) | 16-Jan-2013 | Belgium | Louvain | STUK | 150 | De Diepe Rivieren vzw; Muziektheater Transparant, STUK Louvain, Monty Antwerp | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 96 | The Three Feathers | A Magical Opera | The Three Feathers is a magical opera for children and adults of all ages. Based on a tale by the Brothers Grimm, the story depicts shy Princess Dora's journey, as she follows her magic feather to the Underworld ruled by a mysterious Frog King. Through a combination of courage, determination, loyalty and kindness, Dora triumphs and saves her kingdom. The Three Feathers has excitement, adventure, comedy and joyful chaos. And the Underworld scenes, in particular, allow for great originality of music, text, and theatrical magic. We view The Three Feathers as a contemporary Magic Flute. It is scored by chamber orchestra, in one Act lasting 80 minutes. The musical style is a hybrid of opera and American musical theatre. | Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 80 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Lori Laitman | Scott Williamson | | Dana Gioia | Brothers Grimm | Beth Greenberg | Randy Ward | Jane Alois Stein | | | Joan Grossman | John Ambrosone | | Cara Rawlings (Fight director) | 17-Oct-2014 | USA | Blacksburg | The Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre at The Moss Arts Center at VA Tech | 1260 | Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech University; Opera Roanoke
School of Performing Arts at Virginia Tech
Blacksburg Children's Chorale | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 97 | Scenery in the mirror II | Multimedia Music Theater | With the slogan ‘Adhering to science and technology, Leading the trends of artistic creation’, works of the multimedia music theater——Scenery in the Mirror II, focusing on exploring the spiritual wealth of artistic activities as well as pursuing the social functions of contemporary and performing arts in creative industry. With music as the main body, the whole concert is a fusion of visual design, installation art, interactive design and performing art. The concert conveys the contemporary aesthetic standard. Every individual work in the concert expresses strong artistic character, in which, contains the thinking of the human spirit, such as RUNNING AWAY and LOST. And there is works takes its origin from philosophy of the Chinese ethics, like SHEN MING (THE GODS). It is in the work BAI JU (THE HERMIT), that the multimedia technique, for example, application of the holographic screen, and using Kinect and 3D projection mapping helps expressed the artistic language in an alternative way. The work JING ZHONG JING (MIRROR OF INFINITY) combines multimedia technology and artistic language perfectly well. Another stereotype is the work DUST. It presented us the fusion of Peking Opera and electronic music. The work ‘2½’，utilizing line and chronological body language , which made visual design as a melodic music, from which, undoubtedly brought new concept of the multimedia music theatre. Last work of the concert-JIE or THE BOUNDARY in English, tells the story of the boundary of "life and death", takes the origin from the German Philosopher’s Philosophical inquiry It also brought the whole concert to the finale. The whole concert is full of young generation’s exuberant vigor and vitality. which, provided us with a strong visual impact. Meanwhile, the various form in the concert brought the music theater brand new concept. | Shanghai Conservatory of Music/Dai Xiaorong | Performance | Black Box | 90 | No Language | | 0 | 1-10 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Dai Xiaorong (Art director), Dai Weiyi (Music director) | 29-Oct-2014 | People's Republic of China | | Shanghai Conservatory of Music | 742 | Shanghai Conservatory of Music | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Performance, Videokunst |
| 98 | Mirror Sphere | | In Lijiang city of Yunnan, there still exists a female kingdom—the Mosuo people who keep the matriarchal social structure. They believe in an ideal kingdom, a heaven called "Sibuanawa" where the souls of their ancestors rest and live. That place is beautiful as a dream which is filled with flying colorful clouds and scattered with oxen and sheep. It is a place exempt from killing or blood, tear or suffering, or war! There only exists singing and laughter. Several Years ago, I met a female singer from Shangri-la, Yunnan—Zongyong Zhuoma. I listened to her sing an ancient ballad and was profoundly touched by the ancient simplicity, elegance and solemn in that tune. Since then, new yearns and dream took root in my heart.And that is the inspiration of the composition and the title of this work. Virtual and reality, existence and non-existence… ego and id, reality and dream… These sets of opposite elements resemble the reflections in the mirror. They confront and tangle with each other to construct a harmonious visual sphere of mirror images, which interprets human being's eternal pursuit for the "self". Just as the theatre equipped with both elements of virtual and reality, the real dancing bodies echo with the flashing light, shadow and the rhythm of the music. They merge as opposites and serve as mirror metaphors for each other. Eventually, they will step across the boundaries with the power of digital aesthetic. The harmonious unity implies the author's Buddhist contemplation The work is divided into two parts: The first part is ballads of the mountain song style, while the second part is dancing of ancient simplicity and solemn beauty. | Shanghai Conservatory of Music/Dai Xiaorong | Performance | Black Box | 10 | No Language | | 0 | 1-10 | Zhao Guang | | | | | | Tang Ming, Lu Yi | | | Huang Doudou | Dai Xiaorong | | | | 28-Oct-2014 | People's Republic of China | | Shanghai Conservatory of Music | 742 | Shanghai Conservatory of Music | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Performance, Videokunst |
| 99 | Sideshows | Opera-Ballet | The piece began as a song-cycle; The Dancing Bear was commissioned for the Olympic 2012 New Music Weekend at the Southbank Centre and premièred on the 13th July 2012. The Bearded Lady followed which was performed and shortlisted for the Ludlow English Song Composition Competition on the 31st of July 2013. The two songs were then performed together at the Birmingham Conservatoire Recital Hall on the 5th of November and awarded the Philip Bates Prize. This success promoted a further two movements to be added titled The Palm Reader and The Fire-eater.The four-song version was performed by Manchester University Chamber Ensemble at the Cosmo Rodewald Concert Hall on the 5th February 2014 and by Khymerikal at Carole Nash Recital Hall (Manchester) on the 14th of May 2014. The final opera-ballet version was workshopped as part of Rough for Opera at the Cockpit Theatre (London) on the 6th of July. | Leo Geyer, Martin Kratz (Constella Ballet & Orchestra) | Instrumental Theatre | Black Box | 35 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Leo Geyer | Leo Geyer | | Martin Kratz | | Joel Fisher | | | | Alfie-Taylor Gaunt | | | | | 9-Aug-2014 | United Kingdom | London | Tête á Tête Festival | 200 | Constella Ballet & Orchestra; Khymerikal | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Instrumentales Theater |
| 100 | The Merchant of Venice | Opera in Three Acts and an Epilogue after William Shakespeare | The Merchant of Venice, an opera by the composer André Tchaikowsky (1935-1982) after William Shakespeare, which received its world premiere in 2013 at the Bregenzer Festspiele in Bregenz, Austria. The opera was finished at the time of Tchaikowsky’s death, save for the last 24 measures of orchestration, which were completed by composer Alan Boustead. | Bregenzer Festspiele | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 160 | English | | 0 | > 20 | André Tchaikowsky | Erik Nielsen | Lukáš Vasilek | John O' Brien | William Shakespeare | Keith Warner | Ashley Martin-Davis | Ashley Martin-Davis | | Michael Barry | | Davy Cunningham | | | 18-Jul-2013 | Austria | Bregenz | Bregenzer Festspiele | 0 | Bregenzer Festspiele; Adam Mickiewicz Institue
Teatr Wielki Opera Narodowa Warsaw | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 101 | Abstract - Concrete | Multimedia Music Theater | The multimedia music theater——Abstract · Concrete is premiered on 28th , October, 2014 in He lvting Concert Hall as one of several significant events in the New Art Festival, 2014. Presented by Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Institute of Digital Media Art, it is a multimedia art feast of famous composers, dancers and visual artists. With the interdisciplinary cooperation, those artists made the theater a fancy banquet. By taking representative contemporary music as the source of the whole creation, the artistic team impressed the audience with splendid works. Meanwhile, the application of digital technique and the artistic language of digital media helped diversify the form of performance in a multidimensional way. Throughout the whole work, Music, dancers, visual images, and stage device act as multiple roles, in the meaning of independent and interacting with each other. In which the experimental and artistic exploration has deeply rooted in the artistic thinking of the contemporary spirit and will keeps on developing in a brilliant way. Each visual part of the work presented in the theater is an attempt on the destructive and representative way in order to explore the inner meaning of the original music part. The music theater includes 7 individual works. | Shanghai Conservatory of Music/Dai Xiaorong | Performance | Black Box | 90 | Chinese | | 0 | 11-20 | Zhou Xianglin, Xu Jianqiang, Jaroslaw Kapuscinski, He Xuntian, Zhao Guang, Dai Weiyi, Xu Shuya | | | | | | | | | Huang Doudou | Cheng Yuhuai, Veialu Aila-
Unsworth, Jaroslaw Kapuscinski, Yu Tian | | | Dai Xiaorong (Art director) | 28-Oct-2014 | People's Republic of China | | Shanghai Conservatory of Music | 742 | Shanghai Conservatory of Music | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Performance, Videokunst |
| 102 | River of Nostalgia | | Nostalgia is a kind of synesthesia, it is the communication between the inner emotion and human’s mind. It is homesickness, the return of the nature, it is like pursuing one’s root. It is a kind of sincerity; also it is like the fetter of leaves and roots that is bounded together. This piece focused on reflecting the Chinese traditional humanism. By telling the story in a simple way but expressed the strong homesickness. Meanwhile, nostalgia is used as a narrative clue to create the common culture root of our compatriots at home and overseas. It is set to promote the cultural exchanges and cooperation with Taiwan. Designed for percussion, clarinet, mixed chamber music, dance and multimedia and interactive video, this work is different from the traditional drama in how it was designed. Arousing by the dancers with the media and the sound, the contrast of abstract and concrete by applying holographic screen and device of projection, turned the whole theater into a sparkling dream. General Idea of The Story: Travelling thousands of miles, wandering far away from home, he met a wonderful love, a girl of graceful posture and tenderness made him contemporarily forget the misery. From then, two people are like the heavenly pair of lovebirds. However, the feeling of homesickness is fairly strong even if love is around. A wandering heart has made a leap over the mountains and flew back to home. | Shanghai Conservatory of Music/Dai Xiaorong | Performance | Black Box | 21 | | | 0 | 1-10 | Dai Weiyi | | | | | Dai Xiaorong | | | | | Dai Xiaorong | | | | 15-Oct-2012 | People's Republic of China | | Shanghai Conservatory of Music | 1014 | Shanghai Conservatory of Music | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Performance, Videokunst |
| 103 | Klangexpdition Ural (Sound Expedition Ural) | | Can sounds describe a home, a place? Can they report about a country and tell us something about the culture there? How familiar does the outland sounds, how strange the things we know? Equipped with recorders, cameras and multi-band radios musiktheater bruit! travelled through Russia with the Trans Siberian Railway to explore the region of Chelyabinsk in the South Ural to see and hear if there is a certain kind of auditive identity which inheres in places and things. Do geographical and cultural borders also define listening-borders? In the South Ural bruit! found fossils of old german traditionals, came across proudly presented relics and monuments of a time that is long forgotten, listened to a lot of Russian folklore and got lost in endless birch forests. With the rhythm of the rails, the sound of the matryoshka-bells and the crescendo of the Russian soul the music theatre ensemble composed a German-Russian score. They sing along with the Cossacks, try to learn the Russian language, and re-enact the hospitality and frankness that they experienced. bruit! is interested in the borders of meaning and nonsense, of complexity and absurdity of everyday live. With the focus of perception and atmospheric spaces bruit! puts the collected sounds, pictures and experiences into new soundscapes and speech textures that compose their performance. So they create their own music-theatre-aesthetic that erases the borders between concert, fine arts and theatre. | musiktheater bruit! | Performance | Black Box | 80 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | | | | | | musiktheater bruit! | Jule Kerk | | Silke zum Eschenhoff | | | Franziska Riedmiller | | | 19-Sep-2013 | Germany | Berlin | Ballhaus Ost | 70 | musiktheater bruit!; Ballhaus Ost | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 104 | The Scarlet Ibis | | Imagine: Two brothers climb up to a barn loft. The older is a “regular” boy. The younger, nicknamed Doodle, is physically disabled, a “cripplerunt” as his brother sneeringly calls him. The older brother reveals a tiny coffin and cruelly explains, “After you were born, Daddy built it for you.” Then he threatens to leave Doodle unless he touches the coffin. “Don't leave me!” Doodle cries. Shaking with terror, he touches the wood. As he does, an owl flies screeching out from behind the coffin, terrifying Doodle. His brother laughs, “Sissy, sissy!” This scene from our mixed-media opera with puppets explores what it means to be whole and healthy, and how gendered scripts of family life become problematized upon contact with nature. Investigation of the “otherness” of the disabled is expressed in the form of a puppet that portrays Doodle. This is a strong visual metaphor—the character can't walk so, like a puppet, he must rely on others to mobilize him. He is literally created of a different substance (wood and wire instead of flesh and bone). Doodle is counterbalanced with another puppet, the scarlet ibis, an exotic harbinger of distant locales and dying beauty. The music in The Scarlet Ibis is lushly melodic. The older brother is sung by a mezzosoprano, in line with the longstanding tradition of having a mezzo in a “pants role.” However, the part of the disabled younger brother is sung by a countertenor. By placing a woman in an aggressive, normative male role and a man in a boyish soprano register, traditional gender roles are blurred and challenged. This is especially relevant to the story’s exploration of boyhood and nature. The countertenor also manipulates the puppet, adding to the fragile strangeness of the character. Opera remains a radical art form that has pushed artists to reach for emotional and narrative extremes. Death and disease have been frequent operatic topics, and we embrace that tradition even as we seek to complicate it with notions of childhood cruelty and the nature of sibling rivalry. The Scarlet Ibis is visceral, weird, funny and emotionally involving. The Scarlet Ibis is not just for new opera aficionados. Although certainly not exclusively for younger listeners, it has resonance for teens, an underserved audience, who, like the main characters, are going through physical and emotional changes in a world that can seem unkind and dangerous. With The Scarlet Ibis, we aimed to create a 21stcentury opera for a 21st-century audience. | Prototype Opera Festival (American Opera Projects) | Opera | Black Box | 100 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Stefan Weisman | Steven Osgood | David Cote | James Hurst | | Mallory Catlett | Joseph Silovsky | Andreea Mincic | | | | Jeanette Oi-Suk-Yew | | Tom Lee (Puppetry design) | 18-Jan-2015 | USA | New York | | 100 | PROTOTYPE (Beth Morrison Projects. HERE), American Opera Projects | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung, Puppen |
| 105 | YousaidShesaidHesaid | | YousaidShesaidHesaid is a new operatic monodrama that juxtaposes modern perspectives with Schubert’s masterpiece song cycle Die Schöne Müllerin. Written to be performed in rep with the classic work, YousaidShesaidHesaid traces the same timeline as Schubert’s work, but from the experience of the other character in the story, who until now has historically had no voice – the “girl of the mill” herself. Composed for a single female voice and the same period instrument used in Die schöne Müllerin, the new work will also incorporate electro-acoustic elements and use sampling, live processing, and other digital technology. This modern score will similarly be reflected in the libretto through textual connections, distortions, and repeated echoes. Composer Molly Joyce and librettist Christopher Oscar Peña will collaborate to create a parallel monodrama, tracing the same timeline as Schubert’s work, but from the experience of the other character in the story, who until now has historically had no voice – the “girl of the mill” herself. Written for a single female voice and the same period instrument used in Die schöne Müllerin, the new work will also incorporate electro-acoustic elements and use sampling, live processing, and other digital technology. These reflections, distortions, and repeated echoes will similarly be reflected in the text by Mr. Peña, and will ask the dramatic question that has existed since Wilhelm Müller wrote the text of Schubert’s original: just how does this mill-girl feel about all this fuss, anyway? This new work will provide a dramatic and musical juxtaposition that will deepen our understanding of Schubert’s work and its relevance to our time, while remaining exciting and complete in its own right. | Molly Joyce, Patrick Jones | Other | Black Box | 20 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Molly Joyce | Patrick Jones | | Christopher Oscar Peña | | Austin Regan | | | | | | | | | 30-May-2015 | USA | New York | | 0 | VisionIntoArt | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 106 | Recht (Law) | | “RECHT. Ökonomien des Handelns 2” (LAW. Economies of Action 2) is the second music theatre piece of a three-part project series in which experimental film-maker Daniel Kötter and composerHannes Seidl focus on the general conditions of social action. The duo has been working together since 2008, experimenting with forms of documentary storytelling in the film and music genres. “RECHT” broaches the question of how spatial planning and borders shape the legal system. In an experimental set-up, two groups work on the creation of regulatory systems: in the film a group of six lawyers and NGO workers can be seen discussing, arguing, dancing and celebrating. They are situated on a Mosel region island in noman’s land near the small town of Schengen in Luxemburg. Three decades after the first Schengen Agreement they ask themselves how law could secure justice at a global level. Their assignment: to create a new, transnational law that satisfies the requirements of traditional national legal practice and, at the same time, acknowledges new, global demands. Kötter and Seidl launched this unusual “Republic of Scholars” in the late summer of 2014 and accompanied them over 24 hours with a camera and a microphone. Soloists from theEnsemble NADAR accompanied the thinkers on the island in the form of a “festive orchestra” and sonic confrontation. Live, on stage, the group of Ensemble NADAR musicians operates – in analogy to the island − within its own system of rules spanning improvisation, screen and concert space: experimental documentary film and live concert move closer together, duplicate, accompany and comment on one another and let territorial conditions of law and music become a concrete reflexion and experience about the complex phenomenon of law in an interplay of all levels. | Kötter Seidl (Ensemble Nadar) | Performance | Black Box | 85 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Daniel Kötter & Hannes Seidl | | | Daniel Kötter & Hannes Seidl | | Daniel Kötter & Hannes Seidl | Rahel Kesselring | | | | Daniel Kötter & Hannes Seidl | | Marcin Lenarczyk, Marcin Poplawski, Hannes Seidl | Karol Czyz, Daniel Kötter (Camera) | 23-Jan-2015 | Germany | Frankfurt | Mousonturm | 200 | Kötter/Seidl GbR; Mousonturm Frankfurt, Frankfurter Positionen, Muziekcentrum De Bijloke Gent, Berliner Festspiele, Exzellenzcluster „Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen“ an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 107 | Xochicuicatl cuecuechtli (Ribald Flowersong) | | This is the first modern “opera” written in Nahuatl, the Aztec’s language, nowadays spoken by about three million people in Mexico. It is also the first large-format piece in Latin-American repertoire, where native percussion and percussive dance (written in the score) is a main feature for an operatic performance. Pareyon’s musical score is as well a novelty, since it is fully noted using native Mexican symbols and original sound representation. Pareyon’s libretto is based on one of the Cantares Mexicanos, which is a collection of songs in Nahuatl, written in the 16th century after an older oral tradition. The text is considered by most Nahuatl specialists to be among the most intriguing texts written in colonial Nahuatl, and among the most challenging. The particular songtype is what in Nahuatl is called a Cuecuechcuicatl, which John Bierhorst translates into English as “Ribald Flowersong” and philosopher and Nahuatl scholar Patrick Johansson translates as “Canto florido de travesuras” (flowery song of naughtiness). Based on descriptions of the songtype in ethnohistorical sources which describe it as being sexually inappropriate for a good Christian audience, Johansson reinterprets the flower and nature images of the song as sexual metaphors. This interpretation forms the basis of Pareyón’s work which is built around an erotic theme. The plot of the work, created by Pareyon based on the song, evolves around an erotic relation between a Huastec by the name Tohuenyo (performed by Ricardo Diaz Mendoza, known from Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto), three ahuianimeh “pleasure girls”(performed by Silvia Moreno, Abril Mondragon and Priscella Uvalle) and a cuicamatini “knower of songs” (performed by César Juarez-Joyner) who at the end of the work turns into the Aztec god of music and sexual debauchery, Xochipilli. | SNCA Mexico (Gabriel Pareyón) | Performance | Black Box | 60 | Nahuatl (Aztec’s language) | Spanish | 0 | 11-20 | Gabriel Pareyon | Jose Navarro-Noriega | | Gabriel Pareyon | | | Enid Negrete | | | | | | | | 16-Aug-2014 | Mexico | Mexico City | Centro Nacional de las Artes | 650 | CONACULTA; Centro Cultural El Tecolote, Lluvia de Palos, Centro Nacional de las Artes | 2015 | Special Mention of MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 108 | Prophetika: an oratorio | | Part theatrical event, part visual art installation, part ritual ceremony, Prophetika: an oratorio proposes a mythical cosmology of colliding reflections on freedom. Conceived by stage director Charlotte Brathwaite, it is a multidisciplinary sonically stimulating, visually spectacular original work drawing influence from the legacy of the African diasporatic experience. Inspired by Harriet Tubman’s journey from enslavement to liberation; the cosmic philosophies and improvisational style of Sun Ra; Alice Coltrane’s consciousness rising devotional music and the mysterious invading black monoliths in Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film 2001: Space Odyssey. Described by the Wall Street Journal as “conceptual yet viscerally powerful” Prophetika is a theatrical response honoring life, struggle and liberation. Gestures of violence and aggression contrast images of beauty, wholeness and hope. Time and space are manipulated, molded and obscured. A ritual of life and death, birth and reincarnation is presented through a fractured lens, a theatrical kaleidoscope, using found ethnographic images and objects, suspended sculptures, whispering, chanting, haunting and celestial melodies, pre-recorded and live sounds, extreme darkness and light, poetry and dance. Prophetika aims to open a dialogue with struggling voices that have been silenced. Powerful images of Blackness, prophetic and profane, beautiful and sensual battle out of the darkness into the light, out of the silence to be heard – Angela Davis, Marcus Garvey, Fanny Lou Hammer, Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr., Yoruba prayers, Nina Simone, Frederick Douglas, June Jordan and Sun Ra are a few of the voices mysteriously collaged. Prophetika charts the journey of the rebel soul. It nurtures an expansive vision in a world narrowed by ‘isms’, sexism and racism. Prophetika was presented in workshop at Snug Harbor Arts Center (2015) and The Blue Note Jazz Club (2015) before it premiered at La MaMa Theater in New York March 19 – April 19, 2015. The La MaMa production of Prophetika won a 2015 Obie Award for Best Design. “She’s making theater for and with her generation, with visual and musical sensibility that is a stunningly multidimensional experience,” said director Peter Sellars of Charlotte Brathwaite. With support from Music Theater Now this timely and unique theatrical experience can reach a large and diverse audience. | Charlotte Brathwaite | Performance | Site Specific | 50 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Courtney Bryan | | | Charlotte Brathwaite | | Charlotte Brathwaite | Abigail DeVille | Abigail DeVille | | | Kara Lynch | Kent Barrett | Justin Hicks | | 20-Mar-2015 | USA | New York | La MaMa Theater | 80 | Charlotte Brathwaite; La MaMa Theater | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 109 | Frida y Diego (Frida and Diego) | Fresco operistico | We all love small children, because they are honest. When children are unwrapping a present on Christmas Eve, then the look on their face is genuine excitement. Luckily, some people never grow up, thus they preserve this genuine honesty in their professional lives. When they receive a new toy, they will care for it with love and passion. And, oh boy, they have received a Powerful toy — the opera Frida y Diego. Composer Kalevi Aho, librettist Maritza Núñez, conductor Markus Lehtinen and director Vilppu Kiljunen are the four kids we met together in our first big production meeting. They have known each other for ages and know how to share and play. From the first moments it was clear how much of their own persona they had invested into the project and how much they loved working on it. Sincere passion is a virus, which infects the people one interacts with - a virus that we, the students, will gladly receive from the highly motivated professionals guiding us through the new project. Maritza Núñez had received several phone calls from Kalevi Aho during the composing period. Kalevi had been really happy when he had completed some segment of work and called Maritza to tell her that: “Maritza! Maritza! Today I completed the Stalin monologue!” The next week he was really excited when he had completed the quarrel he expressed that excitement between Trotsky and David Siqueiros. Of course with Maritza the first chance he got! Like kids who got a new video game! They are all good friends, so it is only natural that they have fun with each other. Vilppu Kiljunen, always energetic in his work, was joking with us how he had no idea what the hell was going on in the end of the opera. So he had met with Kalevi to ask about it, but, sadly, he didn't have any idea either. The hilarious side-stories, immense energy, sometimes brutal philosophy about life are the things which make working with Vilppu great. And you could never forget the face he made in secret to the singers when conductor Markus Lehtinen tried to imitate a Theremin' s sound! The green philosophy and “you-are-what-you-eat” movement are getting more and more popular in the world. That is how we, the singers kind of feel in this production. We are nursed into artistic fruits, ready for the picking, in a friendly, happy, and perfectly ecological environment. We have the four great people to thank for it – Núñez, Aho, Lehtinen and Kiljunen. Please upload your files here... | Sibelius Academy Opera | Opera | Black Box | 140 | Spanish | Finnish | 0 | > 20 | Kalevi Aho | Markus Lehtinen | | Maritza Núñez | | Vilppu Kiljunen | Antti Mattila | Piia Rinne | | | | Sirje Ruohtula | | | 17-Oct-2014 | Finland | Helsinki | Sonore, Musiikkitalo | 206 | University of Arts Helsinki / Sibelius Academy Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 110 | AM I. | | AM I is a new music theatre and dance collaboration by Australian Director/Choreographer Shaun Parker and Composer Nick Wales. Time, the near future. Place, where life begins. Seven individuals seek to re-establish a new civilisation, observing the frailties and mishaps of those that have gone before them. Religion meets science in this new world order as society fluctuates between conflict and harmony. Am I investigates the quintessential notion of 'I'. Am I my tribe? Am I my genetic blueprint? Am I a random cosmological consequence? Integrating live music, theatre, voice and dance, AM I features 14 musicians, singers and dancers including international guest artist Shantala Shivalingappa as the otherworldy narrator and protagonist. Nick Wales' new music and cult like singing collide to create a gut wrenching sound scape that drives the highly physical action on stage. Shaun Parker has researched the fundamental principles of Anthropology, Biology and Cosmology and offers a beautifully crafted and powerful storyboard that embodies the creation of the universe and the exploration of genetic identity; from the Big Bang Theory, to the creation of life, to the evolution of species’ to the formation of consciousness, deities, spirituality and societies. How does the individual configure within our modern-day digitised global tribe? | Shaun Parker and Company | Performance | Black Box | 75 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Nick Wales | | | | | Shaun Parker | Shaun Parker | Anna Tregloan | Veronica Neave | Damien Cooper, Shaun Parker | | Damien Cooper | | | 9-Jan-2014 | Australia | Sydney | Sydney Opera House | 620 | Shaun Parker & Company; Major Festivals Initiative, Australia Council, Sydney Festival, Sydney Opera House, Adelaide Festival, Melbourne International Festival of the Arts | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 111 | The Soundtrack Of My Life | | A musical cinematographic theatrical extravaganza about the inner “I”. A traveling musician’s life is told, shown and played through his own eyes. The film covers a period of one year in the artist’s life as he jumps from one place to another, from big concert halls to sketchy jazz clubs, from Canadian highways to narrow streets of Italy, from Urban New York to Swedish countryside, from the Middle Eastern burning sun to Moscow’s lead sky. Tasting different foods and cultures, meeting all sorts of musicians, eccentric people and animals, the artist experiences life on the road to the fullest. Yet gradually he discovers that he is not completely alone on this journey… The musician is in live interaction with his alter ego on the screen: arguing with him, joking with him and even playing with him. Wherever you go, whatever you do – you hear a voice in your head. A voice that laughs both with you and at you. A voice that cheers you up when you’re down and then puts you down when you screw up (and does so with pleasure). The voice that lectures you, teases you, scolds you and compliments you. The voice you can never get rid of. (And if you know several languages, it will annoy you in all of them.) The voice that can be your best friend and your worst enemy. This performance is about the relationship of each one of us with this voice. | Elias Faingersh | Performance | Black Box | 70 | Swedish, English | | 0 | 1-10 | Elias Faingersh | | | Keren Klimovsky | | | Elias Faingersh | | Keren Klimovsky | | Keren Klimovsky | | | | 6-Nov-2012 | Sweden | Malmo | | 200 | Teater KEF | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 112 | Slumberland | | What is that dark no man’s land called ‘sleep’? How can you be completely sure that the ‘dreamworld’ is not the real earth? Or that we are not simply dreaming that we are waking up? In any case, everything you see during the day returns in your dreams, but inside out! Slumberland is a breathtaking film-like musical journey into the world of the night. The point at which everything is overturned and the dream outstrips reality. It is the children themselves who with their astonishing imagination take you to a fascinating world. They tell us about how they sleep, what happens in their dreams and why day turns to night. The songs, performed live by An Pierlé and Fulco Ottervanger, and the film images by Nathalie Teirlinck portray in sounds and pictures a series of wondrous figures who meet each other in a nocturnal world. The moon-girl who lands on earth, the sandman who leaves his sand cave, the sleep professional who makes sleep into a science, the bat-boy who prefers to sleep upside-down. Each one is a magical, moving and comical figure balancing on the rope stretched loosely between what is real and what isn’t, and each lives on enduringly in your memory. This production by Zonzo Compagnie has been showered with positive reviews and in Knack magazine was called ‘one long climax’. The two powerful musicians on stage make you hope you can find their CD after the performance so you can enjoy their marvellous songs long afterwards. | Zonzo Compagnie | Performance | Black Box | 50 | Dutch | | 6 | 1-10 | | | | | | Nathalie Teirlinck | Ruimtevaarders | Vanessa Evrard | | | Nathalie Teirlinck | | | | 31-Jan-2015 | Belgium | | | 200 | Zonzo Compagnie; Kunstencentrum Vooruit, Kunstencentrum Rataplan, Jeugd & Muziek | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 113 | Umm | | Five years after the successful production ‘No Regrets’ about the live and songs of the little Edith (Piaf) de Kolonie MT creates –this time together with Moussem – again music theatre based on the live story of a great female singer. Umm Kulthum has a legendary voice and an eccentric iconic personality. Her songs remain immensely popular in the Arabic world. 'Umm' is an universal story with images, text, movement and music, based on a serie of poems of the poet Taha Adnan especially written for this production. Paul Verrept translated and arranged the poems in Dutch. Thaïs Scholiers sings, plays and takes the kids into the world of the greatest diva. Bo Spaenc composes and plays live together with Osama Abdulrasol music on an arsenal of instruments from all corners of the world. Synopsis: 1.The birth of Umm Kalthoum at the country side. 2.Her father is imam and discovers the marvellous voice of his daughter. He sings regularly at marriages and ceremonies and disguises from her twelfth his daughter as a boy to have the possibility to take her with him. 3.Once grown up, she is invited to sing in the city. 4.Even King Farouk invites her in his palace. 5. Then she becomes more famous. She is the star of the Orient. She disappears after her concerts. She wears sun glasses. Her songs become longer. During a concert of three hours, she sings two or three songs. But everybody loves her. But nobody knows who she loves… The diva remains the «cantatrice of the people», giving her money to the poor. 6.Umm Kalthoum stays alive in the hearts of the people, till now. Even in the Arab Spring? | De Kolonie MT (Paul Verrept) | Opera | Black Box | 40 | Dutch | | 4 | 1-10 | Bo Spaenc | | | Paul Verrept, Taha Adnan | | Benjamin Van Tourhout | Steven Brys | | | | | | | Filip Peeters (Puppets) | 14-Feb-2014 | Belgium | | | 140 | De Kolonie MT vzw; Moussem Nomadic Arts Centre | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater,Puppen, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 114 | Private View | | Annelies Van Parys, one of the resident composers at Muziektheater Transparant, writes Private View, her first opera, for the Opera XXI festival. With the suspense of a thriller, the tension of a whodunit and a good dose of humour, she weaves a subtle web with references to Hitchcock’s visual idiom. Following her composition for the successful production Ruhe, performed by Collegium Vocale Gent, and the impressive Een Oresteia, she is continuing her artistic course in musical theatre. This time she is collaborating with the Scottish poet Jen Hadfield, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Irish director Tom Creed. The Dutch 33 ⅓ Collective is responsible for the video and set design. The audience is drawn in and shares the view of a voyeur who shamelessly penetrates into other peoples’ lives. Private View confronts us with the ambiguity of watching and being watched, an issue that seems more relevant today than in the past: Big Brother is watching you, more than ever. Private View was awarded the FEDORA - Rolf Liebermann Prize for Opera 2014. | Muziektheater Transparant (Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, AskoISchönberg Ensemble) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 75 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Annelies Van Parys | Etienne Siebens | | Jen Hadfield | | Tom Creed | | | Tom Creed | | Collective 33 1/3 | | | Gaea Schoeters (Screenplay) | 13-May-2015 | Belgium | Antwerp | Kunsthuis Opera Vlaanderen | 600 | Muziektheater Transparant, Concertgebouw Brugge, Operadagen Rotterdam, Kunsthuis Opera Vlaanderen, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Asko∣Schönberg, Collective 33 ⅓ , National Opera Bergen, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 115 | Comfort Ye | | It’s six o’clock in the morning. A young man kisses a girl, then runs away. The police arrive... “Comfort Ye” is a new work of music theatre in which young people from a community near Cape Town tell their own stories. Featuring a cast of South African professional singers and actors, a baroque/ jazz chamber orchestra, and young singer/ actors from the choir of Bloekombos Secondary School, Kraaifontein, “Comfort Ye” is directed by an international team assembled by Umculo for this production. A year and a half in the making, “Comfort Ye” was born at writing workshops held in Kraaifontein in November/ December 2013. The stories told and the songs written by the young choir members became the basis for this new work. Music by George Frederick Handel (from "The Messiah" and "L'Allegro, il pensieroso ed il moderato", Berlin-based Australian composer Catherine Milliken, and the young singers combine with words to make a gritty, emotional work based on contemporary issues. The result is an intimate performance about the harsh challenges faced by Cape Town’s disadvantaged young people today. In a world of violence, abuse, crime and mistrust, where do we find hope? This dark story, full of ambiguity and shadow, finds its way to an optimistic conclusion. The world premiere performance of “Comfort Ye”, which has received international invitations (funding pending), took place at Artscape’s Drama Theatre on 6 March, 2015. German stage director and librettist Robert Lehmeier, Australian composer and educationalist Catherine Milliken, Vienna-based Swedish conductor Warwick Stengards and Johannesburg lighting designer Michael Maxwell joined forces with mentor Fatima Dike, choir conductor Siyabulela Sulelo, and harpsichordist Erik Dippenaar to create this performance. Founded in 2010, Umculo is an international music organisation that supports lasting social change through music in South Africa. For further information, see www.umculo.org | Umculo | Opera | Black Box | 80 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Catherine Milliken | Erik Dippenaar, Warwick Stengards | Siyabulela Sulelo | Robert Lehmeier | | Robert Lehmeier | | | | | | Michael Maxwell | | Warwick Stengards (Arranger) | 6-Mar-2015 | South Africa | Cape Town | Artscape’s Drama Theatre | 200 | Umculo | 2015 | Special Mention of MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 116 | The Electric Flute | | “There is nothing new under the Sun,” proclaimed the author of Ecclesiastes several thousand years ago. And indeed, great works of art, touching upon questions of Good and Evil, Love and Hate, Destiny and the restorative power of Art, have all borrowed from the works of earlier generations, re-casting the past with the aid of chutzpah and glitter to rock new audiences with a sense of discovery. In Opera Spanga’s concept, Pamina is the daughter of an old illicit liaison between a politician and an escort. Sarastro has risen to become a powerful politician. Cast off by her lover, The Queen of the Night (Queenie) has become the Madam of an A-list bordello. The Queen, along with her top two hookers and her house drug pusher, Papageno, seduce Tamino into blackmailing Sarastro and his dirty-handed chief of staff, Monostatos. Sarastro, however, has plans to continue his power into the next generation, and grooms Tamino to succeed him. But this being the 21st century, Pamina is not going to let her gender get in the way of her becoming the next President. It is an underworld story of queens who live in the night; of men who quest for endless power; of couples—like Sarastro and the Queen—who turn memory of a momentary love into an eternal hatred; of a girl’s coming of age and a boy who is trained to love through the pornography of the image and, when finally confronted with breathing flesh, can’t deal with the real thing. For hundreds of years, the pretty tones of Tamino’s magic flute and Papageno’s silvery glockenspiel have sugar-coated the misogyny and racism within that libretto. Opera Spanga reads that libretto as a dirty story of a group of men and especially women, far more unsympathetic than they have hit her to appeared in other productions of The Magic Flute. Van Eijk, certainly, has never worked on an opera with such a cadre of unsympathetic heroines, not even in her stage and film versions of Don Giovanni (Donna Giovanna). Her intention is not to manufacture a patently politically incorrect interpretation, but to mine the nuggets of radioactive racism and misogyny. With that in mind, Opera Spanga’s staged The Electric Flute like a film script, with the sudden cuts and changes of Points of View, the strong character of the musical soundtrack, that make cinema so gripping and original. | Opera Spanga | Opera | Black Box / Public Space | 94 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Floris van Bergeijk | | | Jonathan Levi | | Corina van Eijk | Jolanda Lanslots | Pieter van Rooij | | | | Henk Post | | Jolanda Lanslots (Art direction) | 26-May-2015 | Netherlands | | | 200 | Opera Spanga | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 117 | The Well Rested Terrorist | | The Well Rested Terrorist is a live concept album. The experiment was to put a band in a theatre, and an actor in a band. Maud and Zoe Ni Riordain are the core members of Maud in Cahoots, the contemporary electro pop band that wrote the songs in piece. The Well Rested Terrorist is the first song in the piece, and the central visual metaphor of the show. What follows is a meditation on fear, performance, and being yourself. The songs are the script for the piece. Our intention was to apply a dramaturgical rigor to the lyrics of the songs to find a theatrical arc. We also drew upon the Oliver Sacks collection of case studies Musicophelia. We did not want to create a naturalistic linear narrative, as we felt the audience would have a more inclusive experience if we avoided explaining the songs. The performance style is stark and precise, allowing the audience to receive the songs in a unique way. The atmosphere and spontaneity of a gig is replaced by a constructed reality where the actor and the singer are vulnerable, exposed, and liberated. The frame of a ‘concept album’ allows for genre shifts from dark electro-pop to cabaret. There are four performers on stage; two musicians (guitar/drum, and keyboard), and two singers/actors (and a cameo singer). They are in a liminal space, a kind of abstract departures lounge. It’s a place where a man and a woman, and their two facilitators perform songs for an audience that tells a story. There are short video interludes where we see them in a therapy situation. They are attempting to understand themselves, but it seems that they can only function in the world of performance and songs. There is an emphasis on a shared experience. The performers confront the idea of an audience watching them- they are included in every moment, and are invited to observe. Throughout the writing and rehearsal process, we were considering the audience as the 6th character in the piece. The intention was to bring them into quite a dark world, focusing on a fractured relationship. The arc of the piece brings them to a place of selfacceptance and the possibility of joy. We are interested in mixing musical forms with theatrical techniques and performativity. The Well Rested Terrorist confronts the idea that an album is bygone form. By putting an album in a new context, it gives the music a new emphasis, and a new life. As musicians and theatre makers, we are focused on how the audience receives the material, how context informs meaning. | Zoe Ni Riordain | Performance | Black Box | 52 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | | | | Zoe Ni Riordain | | Zoe Ni Riordain | Grace O'Hara | | | | | Ilo Tarrant | | | 9-Sep-2014 | Ireland | Dublin | The Peacock Theatre | 130 | N/A | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 118 | Ajax / Qu'on me donne un ennemi | | Ajax / Qu’on me donne un ennemi encompasses several works by the German dramatist Heiner Müller. Ajax par exemple is a poem written 5 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, a month when Müller, who was suffering from cancer, underwent critical surgery. Initially published in a major German newspaper, Ajax par exemple is a long poem (169 lines) or a long monologue – the two forms being virtually indistinguishable. A writer, who wants to write a tragedy, is affected by what he can see from his hotel room: the east side of a Berlin reassembled. The poem looks like a mix of the writer’s memories and pieces of Sophocle’s Ajax. With the 2nd monologue, La liberation de Prométhée, the global issues of these texts are evoking the chaotic dimension of European societies and the political thought. The poem pursues a winding yet discontinuous path, and its content is both colloquial and erudite. A portrait of the artist gradually takes shape, alternately humorous and serious: the artist overwhelmed by taxes, his quarrels with other directors (Peter Zadek) and the cost of medical care (the money he had earned from a literary award was all spent on dentists); the artist cut off from the general public that prefers bestsellers, television and action flicks to tragedies, and that equates Ajax with detergent; the artist mourning the political “innocence” of his youth and seeking for his place amid the new configurations where he now finds himself : reunified Germany and Europe. The show provides these works with the offbeat setting of music theater. Continuously going between what is said and what is played, the performers reveal all the power of a partition contained in an intense and electrical movement of 50 minutes. Sylvain Cartigny, Lazare Boghossian and Mathieu Bauer distill their music, steering stage codes toward the realms of live performance, giving us a very wide range of sounds and emotions, and turning André Wilms into a rock star who embodies the role of “transmitter of the rowdiest poetry”. | Mathieu Bauer, Sylvain Cartigny (Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil) | Performane | Black Box | 55 | Frensh | | 0 | 1-10 | Sylvain Cartigny | | | | Heiner Müller | Mathieu Bauer | | | | | | | | | 2-Dec-2014 | France | Paris | Théatre des Bouffes Du Nord | 300 | Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil - centre dramatique national | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 119 | Nahod Simon (Simon the Foundling) | | On May 29th, 2015 the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen celebrated the premiere of the fantastic opera in 10 pictures "Nahod Simon” (Simon, the Foundling) composed by the Serbian composer Isidora Žebeljan in a scenic interpretation by the Dutch director and setdesigner Michiel Dijkema. “Nahod Simon” based on the Serbian folk-poem “Nahod Simeun” and the novel “The chosen” by Thomas Mann (1951), which tell the story of the child and the adult Simon, son of an incestuous relationship between brother and sister and his way of life. His life is destined to be good and kind in a world of fear, aggression and refusal. Monks found the baby and raised him and he goes on a journey to look for his mother and father. After some stations, where he tried to help and to inspire the men, he meets his mother by accident, not knowing, she is his mother and they became lovers. When they realized, what they’d done, Simon fell in despair and leave the manhood and tries to disappear. He became a healer and in the end he meets his father, heal him and went to the sky. It’s a fantastic story between myth and reality, Good and Bad, Life and Death. | Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 120 | Serbian | | 0 | > 20 | Isidora Zebeljan | Valtteri Rauhalammi | | Borislav Čičovački | Thomas Mann | Michiel Dijkema | Michiel Dijkema | Jula Reindell | Anna Melcher, Juliane Schunke | | | Andreas Gutzmer | | | 29-May-2015 | Germany | Gelsenkirchen | Musiktheater im Revier | 1008 | Musiktheater im Revier GmbH | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 120 | EJDEHAK | | The story of EJDEHAK originates in the Avesta. But in the tenth century AD, the famous Iranian poet, Ferdowsi retold this story in his famous book named Shahnameh. EJDEHAK was a really nice person until Ahriman, the Evil Spirit, persuaded him to kill his father. After death of his father, EJDEHAK became ruler. Ahriman once again appeared to him food EJDEHAK asked Ahriman what he wants as his prize for the meals he had prepared. Ahriman just asked EJDEHAK to kiss his shoulders. But suddenly two vicious black snakes grew from EJDEHAK shoulders. EJDEHAK was terrified and didn’t know what to do with the snakes. Ahriman once again appeared to him .He told EJDEHAK that the only way to control the snakes is to feed them human brain every day otherwise the snakes would eat EJDEHAK himself. So EJDEHAK started killing young men and Meanwhile, he decided to wage a war against Jamshid, the ruler of the world. EJDEHAK’s tyranny lasted for many years until one day he saw a horrible dream. He called the dream-readers who told him someone named Feryadoun will eventually defeat him. EJDEHAK got frightened and searched for Feryadoun everywhere. he made several attempts to find Feryadoun but couldn’t find him anywhere. In a battle, Feryadoun captured Zahhak and imprisoned him in a cave in Mount Damavand. He then freed Jamshid’s two daughters and brought freedom and happiness to Iran. | Saeideh Mirzahossein, Dramatic Arts Centre | Performance | Black Box | 35 | Persian | | 0 | 1-10 | Saeideh Mirzahossein | | | Fahimeh Mirzahossein | | Fahimeh Mirzahossein | Ali Tabe Emam | | | | | | | Samaneh Mirzahossein, Sima Mirzahossein, Saeideh Mirzahossein (Puppet makers & Puppeteers) | 1-Jul-2012 | Iran | Tehran | Tehran International Puppet Theatre Festival | 120 | Dramatic Arts Center | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Puppen |
| 121 | Vigilante | | DEVELOPMENT: Vigilante first began rehearsals in the fall of 2013. Traveling to Keyano Theatre in Fort McMurray for an intensive process of rehearsing and making changes in the day, performing to an audience at night, and returning to the hall the next day to make more changes. This period was followed by two separate dramaturgical workshops with the National Art Centre's Sarah Garton Stanley - who helped develop the story. Finally this first year of development ended with a three week run at Edmonton's Citadel Theatre. As with all our work, despite its main stage showing at the Citadel, we are constantly seeking to further develop and improve the work. As it stands now Vigilante is ready to tour and be presented to an audience; however, part of our process is to redevelop work over the course of many years and we would be interested in an opportunity to continue its development as well as more performance opportunities. PARTNERS: Vigilante was developed along side two partners. The first - Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre, our flagship A house regional theatre that runs a subscription based season. In addition, Vigilante was produced in association with Canada’s National Arts Centre. They are one of Canada’s most important cultural institutions and will continue to play a roll in the development of Vigilante. VIGILANTE: Eight actors and 5 musicians bring this contentious piece of Canadian history to life in a dynamic and explosive new rock opera. Vigilante tells the tale of the infamous Donnelly clan – a family of Irish immigrants who moved to Ontario in order to escape a long standing feud in their homeland. Grudge escalates into sinister threats, property damage, arson, all leading to murder and the massacre of 1880, the most infamous unpunished, and officially condoned, crime in Canadian history. This is still a highly controversial piece of history that has captivated people for over a hundred years. Vigilante sends the Donnellys hurtling out of the grave and toward the audience, as the rock opera score swells, the untamable boys tell their story, and their grievances are lit by rock show style lighting that makes the whole stage pulsate with their fury. As one reviewer put it, “ You won’t leave humming; it’s not a musical in that sense. But you might leave vibrating.” | Jonathan Christenson (The Citadel Theatre) | Opera | Black Box | 120 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Jonathan Christenson | | | Jonathan Christenson | | Jonathan Christenson | | Narda McCarroll | | Laura Krewski | | Beth Kates | | | 7-Mar-2015 | Canada | Edmonton | Catalyst Theatre | 650 | Catalyst Theatre | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 122 | Paradise Interrupted | An Installation Opera in one act | Paradise Interrupted is an arresting new installation opera that poetically weaves the myths of the Garden of Eden and Peony Pavilion with composition that merges 600- year-old Kun opera with contemporary Western opera. The narrative follows a woman searching for an unattainable ideal in a world activated by her singing voice as she attempts to return to the Garden. Interactive technology enables a vast garden and a host of digital characters to interact with the protagonist and respond to her voice. Visual artist Jennifer Wen Ma directs and designs this exquisite opera. Huang Ruo writes a composition that is at once a continuation of tradition and entirely new. The quest-seeking soprano is Qian Yi, who has been lauded by The New York Times as "China's reigning opera princess." | Spoleto Festival USA (Jennifer Wen Ma) | Opera | Black Box | 80 | Mandarin | English | 0 | > 20 | Huang Ruo | John Kennedy | | Chao Ji | | Jennifer Wen Ma | Matthew J Hilyard | Melissa Kirgan, Xing-Zhen Chung-Hilyard | | Gwen Welliver | Guillermo Acevedo, Austin Switser | Lihe Xiao | | | 22-May-2015 | USA | Charlston | Spoleto Festival, Memminger Auditorium | 675 | Spoleto Festival USA; Lincoln Center Festival New York, National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst, Gesang |
| 123 | Svävande damen (The Levitating Lady) | | The Levitating Lady is a variety show opera with two opera singers, one actor and circus fakir, one tightrope dancer and four musicians on stage. It tells the story of teenage girl Agnes, an orphan, looking for where she comes from at a variety theatre show, with its old, dusty and sometimes scary inhabitants. The variety acts are integrated in a story about love, deceit and the possibility of forgiveness. | Malmo Opera | Opera | Black Box | 200 | Swedish | | 0 | 1-10 | Catharina Backman | Annika Bjelk Wahlberg | | Pelle Öhlund | | Pelle Öhlund | Signe Krogh | Signe Krogh | | | | Ilkka Häikiö | | | 1-Apr-2015 | Sweden | Malmo | Malmo Opera | 200 | Malmo Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 124 | Dog Days | | DOG DAYS is a work of contemporary opera-theatre--for six singers, one actor and an amplified new music ensemble--that investigates the psychology of a working class American family pitted against a not-so-distant-future wartime scenario. It asks: is it madness, delusion, or sheer animal instinct that guides us through severely trying times? Where lies the line between animal and human, and at what point must we give in to our animal instincts merely to survive? Commissioned by Peak Performances @ Montclair, Dog Days has since been performed at both Forth Worth Opera and LA Opera, produced by Beth Morrison Projects. It will make its New York City debut in winter 2016 at the annual Prototype Festival. | Peak Performances @ Montclair, Beth Mirrison Projects (David T. Little) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 120 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | David T. Little | Alan Pierson | | Royce Vavrek | Judy Bidnitz | Robert Woodruff | Jim Findlay | Vita Tzykun | | | Jim Findlay | | Garth MacAleavy | | 29-Sep-2012 | USA | New Jersey | Montclair State University | 500 | Beth Morrison Projects, Peak Performances @ Montclair, LA Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Prototype Festival | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 125 | Do or not | | The play written by composer, 'Do or not' is originally for a solo instrumentalist. This is about the acting and a process surrounding musical performance. However, with repetition is this process become abnormal and and a distortion. Between the act, music which contains same philosophy has been played, and from the screens Installed on all sides, you would explore how the music is being told as a language, a meaning, a gesture,a happening, a thought, an image, and etc,.. Beside 'Do or not' you can produce or arrange other works, that combines the theater as 'one' or 'multi'. We developed this "monologue" as "polylogue" through which each role exchanges their process. At this version the traditional instruments, which are 장구 (Chang Gu), 피리 (Piri), are used with the piano. And a percussionist played as a piano actress. At last the questions on the screen asks public to obey the rules, just same as what players had been received. Every time they reacted differently because this is 'Do or Not'... | Kang Hyo Jee | Performance | Black Box | 60 | No Language | English, Korean | 0 | 1-10 | Hyo Jee Kang | | | | | | Sang Yeon Par | | | | Gong Ha Yan Ma Eum | Ye Jin Lee | | | 7-Dec-2013 | South Korea | Seoul | | 200 | Seoul Cultural Foundation | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 126 | Rhythm Conference feat. Inner Splits | | In Rhythm Conference Feat. Inner Splits Hans Petter Dahl and Anna Sophia Bonnema are collaborating with musician Nicolas Field and performer Catherine Travelletti. The performance / concert is intended to be an examination of rhythm and expression, far removed from anthropocentrism and from the psychology of roles and characters. It’s an attempt to respond to the feeling that there are always more and more things, that we are living in an age when there is ‘an epidemic of things’. "We are saying ‘no’ to existing forms and conventions, and will be seeking the monstrous, the unpresentable, in an attempt to escape the dominant capitalist consensus, whether it be the aesthetics of the fine and the new, or the codes of social communication." | MaisonDahlBonnema, Needcompany | Performance | Black Box | 65 | English | English, Frensh, Dutch | 0 | 1-10 | Hans Petter Dahl, Nicolas Field | | | Anna Sophia Bonnema | | Hans Petter Dahl, Anna Sophia Bonnema | | Johanne Riss | | | | Marjolein Demey | Pierrick Drochmans | Anna Sophia Bonnema & Hans Petter Dahl (Concept), Lot Lemm (Hats and Setwrapping) | 19-Dec-2014 | Netherlands | | | 100 | MaisonDahlBonnema/Needcompany | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Performance |
| 127 | Dangersparkle and the Lion | | Have you ever felt like you’ve known someone before in another lifetime …or several? Imagine if you were actually stuck with that person for eternity. DANGERSPARKLE AND THE LION, the musical, touching, comic, and way-too personal tale of the history of the human race as seen through the eyes of two hapless immortals, cast out of heaven and doomed to reincarnate together until they can figure out just how to get along, from the dawn of man to the end of days, with stops in ancient Greece, classical India, medieval Europe, the high seas, modern times, and more. DANGERSPARKLE and the LION is easy to produce with a minimal set manipulated by two actors, and three live musicians, and yet over the hour-long performance packs in nine time periods. It has been met with enthusiasm and delight and has been nominated for 7 Planet Connections Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book of a New Musical, and Best Actor and Actress. | Dangerlion Productions | Opera | Black Box | 75 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Balint Varga | Balint Varga | | Lia Tamborra, Harry Einhorn | | Lia Tamborra, Harry Einhorn | Lia Tamborra, Harry Einhorn | Lia Tamborra, Harry Einhorn | | | | | | | 5-Jun-2013 | USA | New York | | 60 | Dangerlion Productions | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 128 | The Lesson of Da Ji | | Under the guise of guqin lessons, the concubine Da Ji and her lover, Bo Yi, (the son of the King’s enemy, the Duke) are having a secret affair. During their ‘lesson’, Da Ji’s maid warns of the King’s return. Bo Yi writes a song for Da Ji, and vows to return. Left alone, Da Ji sings to the moon of her love for Bo Yi. She falls asleep. The moon sings back to Da Ji, warning her that she may be due to have her heart broken. Da Ji wakes up from her nightmare just as the King enters. He invites her to look at some of his maps, and shows her a map detailing Bo Yi’s land. The King describes his strategy: to to feign a peace treaty, and invite the Duke for dinner. At the dinner are The King, Da Ji, the Duke and his wife, Lady Yi. Dinner is served and everyone eats. The King is especially enjoying his meal rather lustily. During the dinner, the King makes Da Ji play the guqin. She calls on the spirit of Bo Yi to give her strength, and their love emboldens her. However, the tale does not end well. The Lesson of Da Ji blends Chinese, Baroque, and Western art forms while bringing legend and dance into a world of music and drama.The composer's interest in Chinese stories, led her to the concubine Da Ji of the Shang Dynasty, an invented tale of Da Ji's forbidden love affair and the revenge of King Zhou. The music is inspired by the Chinese zither, the Guqin, which becomes the instrument of seduction. In the first scene, the music evolves freely from the 7 notes tuning scales of the Guqin. In the second scene, the entire musical journey is a variation on the ancient Guqin tune “the Drunkard” (dated 220-280), which appropriately introduces the dark and lavish banquet where madness is about to happen. The piece also explores the links between the European masque tradition and classical Peking Opera.In the first scene, a Peking opera artist is introduced into the opera to represent the surreal “Dark Moon”, this character brings significant artistic meaning which symbolizes the “Omen” in Chinese culture. The unique instrumentation of the accompanying ensemble has been chosen to showcase the expressive quality of Chinese instruments (pipa, zhongruan, guzheng, and erhu), the elegant sonority of Baroque instruments (lute, recorders, harpsichord, bass viol), the lush Western strings as well as the dramatic use of percussion instruments. The Lesson of Da Ji was commissioned by the Toronto Masque Theatre through the support of Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. | Toronto Masque Theatre | Opera | Black Box | 60 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Alice Ho | Larry Beckwith | | Marjorie Chan | | Derek Boyes | Angela Thomas | Angela Thomas | | | Caroline Guilbault | | | | 10-May-2013 | Canada | Toronto | Al Green Theatre | 250 | Toronto Masque Theatre | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 129 | La niña que riega la albahaca (A little girl watering the basil) | | Opera for children based in Garcia Lorca`s drama. That aims to introduce the children to the poetic world of what love is. With a musical and expresion contemporary environment. | Isaac Banuelos | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 40 | Spanish | | 0 | 11-20 | Isaac Bañuelos | | | | Federico García Lorca | Isaac Bañuelos | Edyta Kzewleka | Edyta Kzewleka | | | | Patricia Gutierrez | | | 8-Aug-2014 | Mexico | Mexico City | Teatro de las Artes del Centro Nacional de la Artes | 200 | Hernan del Riego | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 130 | Viaje al Corazón de las Tinieblas (A Trip to the Heart of Darkness) | | Synopsis: Conrad faces a trial before a jury, the audience. He must revive a trip all over again and for a thousand times he must enter into the darkest of darkness and be able to return unharmed and innocent. This is not a far away story, it is not far away from the geography of a continent that was plundered. The corruptible territory is the human race itself. Its body can rot, and it’s not necessary to be dying because it’s just a matter of urge to destroy. Once again, in the name of development and civilization, man chooses the worst nightmare, and those who could stop it from happened, they ended being the face of terror. For this society, "the others", the monsters, they are not a faulty product, they are its most sophisticated creatures. And “we”... we are a well-intentioned majority, we wash our consciousness by being terrified of the horror. We baptize the Monster in order to excommunicate him; we sent him far away because we do not want him near our children... but at the same time we keep him close thinking maybe we can get same advantage of his vileness. But, above all, we demand the monster discretion, we don’t want to know what he does because if we knew we won’t be able to eat, we won’t be able to sleep... we really want to continue with this endless party. The one who is able to penetrate into the heart of darkness, he cannot return selfcontrolled, even if he returns, he won’t be the same. Now his soul is just clothes hanging on a chair. Staging conception If that “unfortunate episode in the history of the Congo"... is there anything else to be told? This journey into the heart of darkness is the performance itself. The time is now, and Conrad is the battlefield. Two forces, two vermins are confronted in a battle for this new soul. On one side of the fight there is the intriguing possibility of free will, and on the other side, it lands the impure but familiar civilization (A civilization that condemns evil but at the same time she collects its juicy fruits). Before the jury summons him, Conrad must give an explanation and he must try to get away unharmed of the circles of hell. Music conception: This work is primarily musical. We considered that music is the accurate language to express emotions when words are not enough. Kurtz, the mythical character of this story is played by a bass. The horror, the terror, the darkness, the loneliness and death, are some of the ideas that contemporary music manages to transmit. | Martín Queraltó | Opera | Black Box | 120 | Spanish | | 0 | 11-20 | Martín Queraltó | Martín Queraltó | | Alberto Wainer | Joseph Conrad | Marina Wainer | | | | | | | | | 22-Nov-2014 | Argentina | | | 340 | Independent Group | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 131 | Lo mejor de las arias de ópera mexicana (Best soprano arias in mexican opera) | | The show offer a selection of Mexican opera´s most beautiful soprano arias. An actor represents as a Phantom, "The Mexican Opera" that has been living in the libraries missing for hundred years and no ones knows, plays or listen to her. | Katia Reyes | Opera | Black Box | 60 | Spanish | | 0 | 1-10 | | | | | | Isaac Bañuelos | | | | | | | | | 30-May-2015 | Mexico | | | 160 | Katia Reyes | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 132 | The Miller's Wife | | Birth, death, incest, adultery and betrayal: The Miller’s Wife tells the tale of an unusual family setup. Miller Bill Marner is forced into exile with his newborn son, returning to his village 20 years later, when a devastating family secret threatens his life. A compelling traditional opera sung in English with echoes of Puccini.
Set in the beautiful surroundings of north-east Essex, The Miller’s Wife is an enticing new opera that weaves its way through every human emotion. Sung in English, it is a traditional opera with memorable melodies and potent arias enhanced by warm romantic orchestration that has echoes of Puccini with a modern twist.
Bill Marner the miller has always wanted a child of his own but his wife Winnie is too infirm to bear children. So, he decides to have a child with her carer Maude, who is also his mistress. Forced to flee from the village, Bill and his son William do not return for nearly twenty years. But when they do, Bill wants to take his own life when he discovers that William is not his son after all. So, will a secret that has been kept for nearly twenty years save William's plans to marry Maude’s daughter Jessie and ultimately Bill's life?
The Miller’s Wife deals with birth, death and marriage, incest, adultery, disloyalty and betrayal. There is also trust, compassion, love and a bit of humour - all fuelled by the miller’s desire to have a child. | Michael Christie | Opera | Black Box | 109 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Michael Christie | Susannah Wapshott | | Michael Christie | | Matthew Gould | Jean Gray | Jean Gray | | | | Josh Sung | | | 14-Aug-2013 | United Kingdom | London | Cockpit Theatre | 150 | Amick Productions Ltd | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 133 | The Feeling of Going | | „The feeling of going“ is a large scale Dance/Music work by British choreographer Ben Wright for the Swedish Dance Company Skånes Dansteater, The Malmo Opera Orchestra and Chorus (16 singers) and soloists (3). Set to the entire album GO, by Sigur Rós’ frontman and Nordic Music Prize winner Jónsi Þór Birgisson, the work has been fully orchestrated by Jonas Nydesjö and had it’s world premiere at The Malmo Opera in October 2013. It completed a second season as part of The Swedish Arts Biennale in May/June 2015. With his international team of collaborators, including Tony Award winner Projection Designer Finn Ross (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), Wright has conceived a new type of music-theater where choreography creates the foundational element of his spectacular operatic staging, elegantly combining music, dance, design and video projection. Drawing reference from classic children’s fiction such as Alice in Wonderland, Where the Wild things Are and The Wizard of Oz, Wright has developed a poignant narrative thread through Jonsi’s original material. After the onset of sleep, the work follows a lead character’s journey into an exponentially expanding world; dancers and singers become memories, aspirations, shadows and wild beasts. As the staging unfolds audiences are led through a series of encounters, separations, dislocations and surprises, beginning within the confines of a small log cabin and through a rotating forest to eventually meet the rising sun. The production utilized the full capacity of The Malmo Opera stage and employed the award winning Swedish musician/actress Edda Magnason (Waltz for Monica) as a key vocal soloist. The production was created for Malmo Opera using a 22 x 22 meter performance area and 12 meter | Skånes Dansteater (Malmo Opera) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 75 | Swedish | | 0 | > 20 | Jónsi Þór Birgisson | Timothy Henty | | Jónsi Þór Birgisson | | Ben Wright | Will Holt | Theo Clinkard | | Ben Wright | Finn Ross | Zerlina Hughes | Alan Stones | Jonas Nydesjö (Orchestration) | 26-Oct-2013 | Sweden | Malmo | Malmo Opera | 1000 | Skanes Danstater, Malmo Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Tanztheater |
| 134 | Indigestion | | Watch. Listen. Eat. Share. Indigestion is a restaurant-based musical in which you explore the lives of your fellow diners. The ultimate people-watching experience, Indigestion tackles issues such as food wastage, the minimum wage and how to not behave on a first date… Enjoy a three course meal whilst engaging with this innovative music theatre work. Indigestion is a site specific musical set in a real life working restaurant. Audiences are invited to eat a three course meal whilst they discover the lives of their fellow diners as well as their waitress, their host, Rachel. | Tête à Tête Opera Festival | Opera | Public Space | 60 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Michael Betteridge | | | Derek Martin | | Ella Craddock | | | | | | | | | 3-Aug-2013 | United Kingdom | London | Tête à Tête Opera Festival | 50 | New Space Productions/Tête à Tête Opera Festival | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 135 | Il Ballo delle Ingrate | | A spectacular multimedial opera, that is freely inspired by the classical opera by Claudio Monteverdi. In this Ballo, the voluptuous world of sixteenth century musical theatre is only a starting point, the interdisciplinary and technological transfiguration uses analogical (body, voice, instruments) and virtual (video, light, electronic music) vocabuli. The work re-examines themes that were contemporary in 1608, when the original opera by Monteverdi and Ottavio Rinuccini first staged the Ball of the Ingrates, in Mantova. Renzini confronts it with our contemporary reality and interprets it in this light, without forgetting the marvellous and sensual worlds of Barbara Strozzi or Luzzasco Luzzaschi, as well as the "Women’s Concerto" that revolutionized Italian profane music in the late sixteenth century. At the heart of the matter, is marriage, and its refusal by a feminine type that resonates perpetually throughout history (literary or not): the ingrate, the unconventional woman that is not prepared to give of herself unconditionally. The ingrate refuses to tie herself to another person believing it is the only way to preserve her individuality. She resists and never gives in. Amazon, old maid, shrew, emancipated, free and impossible, an indomitable goddess, both talented and discomforting, attractive and feared, the Ingrate finds herself in conflict with the way femininity is classically represented. She distances herself from the literary world and immerses herself in the contradictions of a concrete present, rendering the musical repertory as well as the performance profoundly contemporary. While audacious and ironic, the adaptation is never disrespectful of its classical material. The ingrate's condition addresses gender issues in an existential manner. While Monteverdi's ingrate audaciously affronts a solo, the performance reaches out beyond its repertory breaking through the conventions of musical theatre. This contemporary, multimedia approach, gives rise to an “open” show in which the relationship between spectator and event are progressively blurred. Lights, images and video work will bring forth a scene whose various elements: music, dance, words, images and sound, coexist in an original and non- hierarchical composition. | Letizia Renzini | Opera | Site Specific | 60 | Italian | | 0 | 11-20 | Based on Claudio Monteverdi | Sabina Meyer | | Theodora Delavault | | Letizia Renzini | | | | Marina Giovannini | Letizia Renzini | | Letizia Renzini | | 7-Nov-2012 | Italy | Florence | Museo Marino Marini | 150 | Musicus Concentus; Tempo Reale, Museo Marino Marini, Florens 2012 | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 136 | A Laugh to Cry | | A Laugh to Cry is a contemporary opera about human dignity. A Laugh to Cry explores some primary concerns, which have always haunted human beings, and reveals them from the perspective of our contemporary globalized world. The opera is shaped like a meditation on the hegemonic power of the destruction of memory, the devastation of the Earth and even the collapse of humanity. It evolves in the fringes between dream and reality, between the visible and invisible, being divided in several acts where five characters, two sopranos, one bass and two narrators (a female and a male voice), live and dwell constantly between these two parallels. The opera also involves seven acoustic instruments: flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello, as well as live electronics and extended video staging & scenography and real-time processed images. A Laugh to Cry is a metaphysical theatre embodying eternal archetypes. A Laugh to Cry pursues Miguel Azguime's goal, as poet and composer, to grasp an ideal balance between language and music, to merge the language's semantic and metaphorical components with its sonic values, in order to achieve his concept of “speech as music and music as speech". A Laugh to Cry extends Miguel Azguime's research on voice analysis, re-synthesis and processing, aiming at creating a dynamic continuum between timbre, harmony, rhythm and voice spectra. Paula Azguime focuses for the video staging & scenography of A Laugh to Cry upon her quest on proliferate emotions out of the relations created between music, text and acting, binding her artistic expression to the metaphysical realm of each project. | Paula & Miguel Azguime | Performance | Black Box | 75 | Portuguese | | 0 | 1-10 | Miguel Azguime | Petter Sundkvist | | Miguel Azguime | | Paula Azguime | Paula Azguime | Atalaia 31 | | Silvia Real | Paula Azguime, Perseu Mandillo | | | Perseu Mandillo (VFX, 3D-Effects, Photography) | 27-Sep-2013 | Poland | Warsaw | Warsaw Festival | 400 | Miso Music Portugal; Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music, Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Norrbottensmusiken, Norrbotten NEO, São Luiz Municipal Theatre, Center for Research in Science and Arts Technology (CITAR), Secretaria de | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 137 | Mama Moesa (Mama Musa) | | ‘Tafel van Vijf’ (table of five) combines theatre, music and common heritage. We put the concept of freedom at the heart of all our productions. Freedom is an essential aspect of the lives of all young people – particularly now, when current events demand a very close look at what ‘freedom’ really means. The stories we take as our starting point are about rebellion and resistance and their effect in the world. Mama Musa the project: Mama Musa was shown in Amsterdam for schoolkids (of which half were of Maroccan origin) in combination with a visit to the Jewish Historical Museum on the same day. the performance MAMA MUSA (7+) This is the story of Musa (the Islamic name for Moses), who leads his people away from slavery in Egypt. It is one of the earliest stories about winning freedom – a story like an epic fairytale of visible and invisible powers, with a leading character who is a prince, a murderer, a refugee and a coward as well as a great leader. Musa has to overcome his own fears and insecurities, soften the Pharaoh’s heart and lead his people into freedom. Again and again he also has to confront his people and their fear of change. Through this confrontation, important lessons about solidarity and trust can be learned – and, above all lessons, the essential golden rule ‘Treat others the way you would want to be treated’. It’s one thing to be free, but in the desert of freedom you need rules of behavior to be truly loving to one another. Mama Musa is a musical tale in which the narrator identifies with the mother of Musa, who had to abandon her baby to the river. Distinguished actress and singer Nadia Amin takes this role, together with the unique and inventive sound of The Nordanians - www.nordanians.com - Oene van Geel (viola), Mark Tuinstra (guitar), Marko Bonarius (contrabass) and Niti Ranjan Biswas (tabla). Mama Musa consists of sung and spoken stories - emotional commentaries from a mother’s perspective combined with beautiful yearning music. When the musicians sing they represent the captive people. The music is composed by Oene van Geel (BoyEdgarprice 2013). He composes catchy songs as well as polyphonic and lyrical melodies, with links to sounds of the past, and for the narrative he composes chamber music with an exotic tone. Designer Renée Zonnevylle has created a striking video-wall in which we see the actors moving in costumes coloured by the desert and the river. The play is written and directed by Herman van Baar. | Tafel van Vijf | Opera | Black Box | 59 | Dutch | | 0 | 1-10 | Oene van Geel | | | Herman van Baar | | Herman van Baar | Renée Zonnevylle | Renée Zonnevylle | Renée Zonnevylle | | Saskia Habermann, Boris Stokman | | | | 15-Oct-2013 | Netherlands | Hoofddorp | Schouwburg de Meerse | 270 | Tafel van Vijf | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 138 | Schwarze Bären oder Die Erfindung der Republik! (Black Bears or The Invention of the Republic!) | Eine musikalische Wirtshauskomödie (A musical Wirtshaus comedy) | At the beginning of the working process of “Schwarze Bären oder Die Erfindung der Republik!” / “Black Bears or The Invention of the Republic!” there was the idea of creating a play for and about the city of Weimar in collaboration between actors as well as singers of our ensemble. We focussed on the question how and why Weimar still is a creative place-to-be for artists and celebrities as well as a popular vacation destination for tourists. Where do the visitors come from and what do they wish to experience here? Furthermore it was of interest to us to investigate on how the reputation of being provincial that still comes with Weimar fits in the picture of the constant afflux. This description of Weimar as a “transit room” we found in the notion of a guest house – a place of chance encounter, of depart and arrival. One of the oldest guest houses in Weimars is called “Zum Schwarzen Bären” / “The Black Bear”. The black bear on it’s entrance sign works as an orientation for visitors; it symbolizes safety and protection, but also stands for something dangerous to get away from. To work on that assumption together we invited eight actors and singers of the DNT (Deutsches Nationaltheater) ensemble to a 10 day workshop in November 2013. Besides exchanging personal experiences and reflections of Weimar, we explored the city and surroundings and did researches throughout local archives. With the material gathered, director Enrico Stolzenburg, playwright Kai-Ivo Baulitz and composer Dietrich Eichmann guided musical and scenic improvisations. During the workshop we found the most striking character of the city in the historic situation of the (Weimar) National Assembly in the year 1919 at the theatre in Weimar (which was then given it’s name “Deutsches Nationaltheater / German National Theatre). About 10.000 guests (assemblymen, officials, journalists and constables) came to Weimar to work on the new democratic constitution, far away of the riots in Berlin. The starting point for the text and music of the final music theatre piece were experiences and results of the improvisation workshop. The text of Kai-Ivo Baulitz works as the matrix of the piece. Dietrich Eichmann composed musical modules for the characters and situations parallel to the formation of the text. The final arrangement of the composed parts and the dialogues to one piece was compiled by the entire team and ensemble in April/May 2014 during the rehearsals. | Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar | Other | Black Box | 110 | German | | 0 | 11-20 | Dietrich Eichmann | Dirk Sobe | | Kai-Ivo Baulitz | | Enrico Stolzenburg | Oliver Helf | Oliver Helf | Martina Stütz | | | | | | 25-May-2014 | Germany | Weimar | Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar, E-Werk | 174 | Deutsches Nationaltheater und Staatskapelle Weimar | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 139 | The Einstein of Sex | | The Einstein of Sex is a through-composed performance-lecture about the spectrum of human sexuality and how we deal with it. The show revolves around the famous sexologist and queer rights campaigner Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) who founded ‘Institut für Sexualwissenschaft’ (The Institute for Sexual Science) in Berlin in 1919 and was known in the US press as ”The Einstein of Sex”. We are invited to compare the sexual freedoms of Weimar Berlin with contemporary attitudes to sexuality. There are 4 singers, 2 actors and one child performer onstage. The piece employs dark humour and a poetic, tightly choreographed formalism to celebrate sexual diversity and explore the roots of sexual intolerance and homophobia. The mode of discourse, both spoken and sung, is direct and out to the public, as befits the lecture format. The Einstein of Sex moves freely between different styles and genres. During the show we are presented with a lecture about Hirschfelds sexological research, accompanied by imagery from his rare, and famously bizarre collection of photographs and illustrations. We jump from a richly harmonized and choreographed parody of a “musical” number into an almost naturalistic scene, then into an orchestrated shouting choir piece based on homophobic texts published by present-day politicians and religious figures. The whole piece is framed by prologue and epilogue scenes between Hirschfeld and a precocious, though open-minded 8 year-old girl, offering hope and the possibility of change. The musical style of The Einstein of Sex is a kind of acoustic-electronic “post-postminimalism”, using formalised repetition and driving rhythms together with an accessibility and catchiness which has had critics in Denmark describing the music as both “epic” and “elegant”. Musical settings of documentary audio archive interview material are set alongside original music and vocal arrangements. Often the melodic core material is taken directly from the intonation in the voices of the interviewees in this archive material. In this way an American evangelist’s homophobic rant can be looped and transformed into a warped, joyous cha-cha and the voice of a former house keeper from Hirschfelds institute becomes a formal minimalist choir piece. The Einstein of Sex is a musical, celebratory reminder of the paramount importance of both love and science. A blackly comic, provocative and inventive piece of music theatre. | Livingstones Kabinet | Opera | Black Box | 75 | Danish | | 0 | 1-10 | Peter Livingstone | | | Peter Livingstone | | Nina Kareis | Dorte Holbek | Dorte Holbek | | | | Mads Vegas | Erik Christofferson | | 19-Apr-2015 | Denmark | Copenhagen | Husets Teater | 120 | Livingstones Kabinet | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 140 | Dreams Music '13 | | Dreams Music is a trans-media and music composition created by Czesław Minkus. The piece is written for an electro-acoustic orchestra MINKUS-TMAexplorers and includes human voice arrangements, electronically processed trumpet, and other electro-acoustic and electronic instruments. In addition to the material (photography, film, computer and graphic images) recorded during dream sessions and during other psychedelic states, the composition uses written “impressions” from these journeys. Later on, these impressions are altered using multi-layered computer processing and become a sort of video score which in turn forms a base for actor’s performances, space projections and musical themes. During the concert/spectacle it is planning a short introductory presentation concerning different topics of the composition delivered by a well-known psychopharmacologist, biochemist and neurobiologist – prof. Jerzy Vetulani. Looking back to the heritage of the ancient Greece, we find Plato mentioning the “musical dream” of Socrates. That dream used to occur regularly with an instruction: “Socrates, make music…” Democritus also pointed out the existence of musical dreams, and so did Lucretius, a famous philosopher and poet of ancient Rome. A project of the composition described above reaches into other regions of perception – it relates to contemporary musical/trans-media sensitivity. Using many potential ways of exploring the sound of dream (musical and other) –beginning with the latest scientific research (registration with the most recent technological devices all changes and pictures of brain during the sleeping session) through psychological techniques of interpreting (psychoanalysis, hypnosis etc) combined with the pure poetics of sounds, gestures and words, the composer expresses his message in a multi-channeled way, including a ‘biological’ transmission of his own dreams and visions connected with the altered states of mind. The project presents original form and progressive musical-transmedia language. Because the author uses the results of recent scientific research and new artistic ideas, the audience could explore the new spheres of artistic experience. This project is unique also because it offers completely new experience in artistic perception , it broadens the artistic experience reaching into the sphere of science, it uses the most recent audio-visual technology. | Trans Media Art Centrum, Czesław Minkus | Performance | Black Box | 70 | Polish | | 0 | 1-10 | Czeslaw Minkus | | | Czeslaw Minkus | | Czeslaw Minkus | Czeslaw Minkus | | | | Przemek Swida | | | | 19-Dec-2013 | Poland | Kraków | MOS | 300 | Trans Media Art Centrum | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Vokalartisten, Videokunst |
| 141 | Vom Lärm der Welt (The Noise of the World) | | “Vom Lärm der Welt” is a project, in which actor- and opera-ensemble and the symphony orchestra worked together in a multi-discipline production focussing on German history and its links to Today. Author Christian Lehnert shows a journey between the Reformation until the present age. He asks the question: Do we need a radical restart or is there an opportunity to get to the good things step by step? Müntzer and Luther are two antipodes of the scenic construction created by Lehnert. We can still see their diametrical opposed positions in the present time. The year 1525, which was the time of agrarian disturbance in the middle and south parts of Germany, becomes central: Luther claims the freedom of people before God and insisted on being a part of the secular hierarchy. At the same time, Müntzer is willing to revolutionize the social conditions through a religious war. One is called “Fürstenknecht” while the other seems to be a fanatic martyr, who sends thousands of farmers in the “last, holy” battle, where they were massacred. Next to these central characters who question “Reformation or Revolution”, Lehnert shows three demons which are dark angels of the history. They take the journey through the time using quotations of Marx, Luxemburg, Trotzki and Rosenberg and sprinkle spots of slogans by them through the story. They all are similar in the promise of an end of all fights. Even the contemporary warrior of God joins this believing. In the composition of Sven Helbig evolves a special form of music theatre, which maybe can be referred to as oratorical opera: “This music is composed by a bed of alternating chords. They are created for the perspective of the acting persons in sound, rhythm and their impact. Quart and quint chords dominate the harmony as representatives of natural vibes of the universe”, Sven Helbig characterizes the experimental character of the piece. | Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 80 | German | | 0 | More than 20 | Sven Helbig | Stefan Solyom | Markus Oppeneiger | Christian Lehnert | | Hasko Weber | Oliver Helf | Syzzy Syzzler | Beate Seidel, Hans-Georg Wegner | | | | | | 28-Mar-2013 | Germany | Weimar | Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar, Großes Haus | 850 | Deutsches Nationaltheater und Staatskapelle Weimar | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 142 | Space of Memory - Spiegel der Erinnerung | | Travelling Cinema collaborates together with the sound artist Anja Kreysing (MIDIfizedaccordion, electronics) using 16mm film-loops (found-footage and handprocessed) and life sound of the projectors by contact microphones. A cube-room out of projection fabrics was created, offering some people to sit down inside the cube and tell their story to capture the moment and create a reflection of space within a moment. The projected images and and storyteller could be observed from any viewpoint inside the exhibition space being intervened by the the created life sound and noise. | Anja Kreysing, Travelling Cinema | Other | Black Box | 10 | German | | 0 | 0 | Anja Kreysing | | | | | Anja Kreysing | | | | | Alisa Berger | | | | 19-Oct-2013 | Germany | Bochum | Rottstr5 Kunsthallen | 40 | Travelling Cinema | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Videokunst |
| 143 | Vigilio Brucia (Vergil is burning) | | Rome, 22 B.C. Poetry and power, beauty and violence, memory and consensus: through their performance Virgilio brucia Anagoor deals with these themes from a sideangle, entering into the laboratory of the intellectual who had foreseen the demise of Imperial Rome. There is much prejudice on the figure of Publius Vergilius Maro – commonly known as Virgil – the bard of Octavius Augustus and who extinguished any hope of transforming Imperial Rome into a Republic. A poet at the service of imperial ideology, but Anagoor identifies some flaws. Firstly, the two books of his Aeneid that he read to Augustus and which narrate the violence and destruction meted on Ilio and the Trojan kingdoms, and the journey into the after world, the definitive turning point of the past exiled to memory. Thus Virgilio brucia is an opportunity to ponder on the relationship between art and power, the function of culture and that of memory, imperial warfare, and violence. Anagoor’s language is characterised by its clarity and luminosity, a dramaturgy made of symbolic gestures which plays between ritual and rarefied suspension. During Anagoor's theatrical research and after the design of the dramaturgical elements, there are two creative paths that precede any figurative invention. On one side we have research and musical composition through constructing architecture and sound landscapes; and on the other side we have scenography and viedeo designing in order to realize the physical ambient using recordings to support the designing process. | Anagoor | Performance | Black Box | 100 | Italian | English | 0 | 1-10 | Paola Dallan | | | | | Simone Derai | | Serena Bussolaro, Simone Derai | | | | | Mauro Martinuz | Marta Kolega, Gloria Lindeman, Gayanée Movsisyan (Vocal composers) | 21-Jun-2014 | Italy | | | 300 | Anagoor | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 144 | Europa Train Score | | „Europe Train Score” is a thematic audio-visual composition involving the “appropriation” of communication space. The piece has a mobile character. It encompasses the virtual space of a train’s route. The train travels throughout the European continent. The particular fragments of the route – the vectors between the railway stations of major European cities – create a net of miscellaneous connections – the possible railway trips. Those virtual nets of communication connections constitute the basis for the construction of musical structures. The basic elements – the modules from which the composition is constructed - are the audio visual samples of the space of major European railway stations lying along the route of the train. The recordings of film and audio material from the railway stations (Travel Temples) include the sequences/takes of the pedestrian tracks (underground passages, stairs, railway platforms), departures and arrivals of trains, announcements from the loudspeakers, passengers getting on and off the trains, fragments of conversations in different languages, etc. The film and sound material is subsequently subject to studio processing (transformations, sampling, mix, and visual scores). The prepared sequences of film and audio samples are used as visual score structures and independent soundtracks activated during the performance of the piece. The presentation was designed as an audio visual art concert for electronic trumpet, other electroacoustic and electronic instruments, live mix, and multiscreen projections of video samples. The performances of the concerts-shows can take place in all European cultural centres which are situated along the route of the “EUROPE TRAIN SCORE” project. | Trans Media Art Centrum, Czesław Minkus | Performance | Black Box | 57 | Polish | | 0 | 11-20 | Czeslaw Minkus | | | Czeslaw Minkus | | Czeslaw Minkus | Czeslaw Minkus | | | | Pawel Weremiuk | | Piotr Madej | | 25-Sep-2014 | Poland | Katowice | Pałac Młodzieży | 300 | Trans Media Art Centrum | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 145 | Endlich Opfer! (Hi victim!) | | “Hi Victim” (Endlich Opfer!) was performed by the ÖENM at the pocket opera festival in Salzburg and deals with a photo, which was given to the composers in the beginning of the composition process. This photo shows Italian sunbathers at the beach of Naples ignoring two dead gipsy girls lying covered with towels on the beach – it shocked the world in 2006. When I received the photo I told the stage director Thierry Bruehl that I won’t make a music theatre about this scene. What kind of music doesn’t raise the moral pointing finger and what kind of music doesn’t celebrate pain? But the more I thought about these questions I asked myself about the moment, in which you’re confronted with a scene like this. What exactly is this awkward silence, this faint feeling of powerlessness? And I recognized that this void is full of blatant and unfulfilled desires, a methodically insanity compressed in a strong corset strangulating humanity and compassion. “Hi Victim” starts at this point – an empty stage, a counting voice, musicians appear by following strict vector courses along the stage. Some are blowing dust through instruments and disappear, some are playing on their positions, isolated in the stage space. A colored conductor (Vimbayi Kaziboni) is projected conducting at the wall in the back of the protagonists – he’s ignored by the performers, trying to sync with the live, the white conductor, but left alone at the wall. The music consists of a live part by the ensemble and of a synchronized tape. As the stage the music is composed in thinking of spiral developing – every minute a new performer enters the stage (entering and leaving the stage is part of the score) till a machine is created without pausing. After 12 minutes the stage is full of musicians, a children choir, singers and an actor – they’re representing the corset of insanity, the method that doesn’t allow anybody to slip out of the system. “Hi Victim” has no libretto – the singers sing through solmization, the voice of the tape is counting and the actor is the only performer, that crosses the existing ways and interacts with musicians and the projected conductor – scene, music and video are interlacing each other and tell a story without any words. With the quote of “Oh Superman, Oh judge” in the end of “Hi victim” it’s obvious that this pocket opera is not a story about redemption, it’s the story of watching the void - with the aim to create a reflecting moment for the prerequisite of humanity. | Taschenopernfestival Salzburg, Ensemble oenm | Performance | Black Box | 20 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Brigitta Muntendorf | Juan García Rodríguez | | | | Thierry Bruehl | Hubert Schwaiger | | | | Hannes Lichtenfels | Hubert Schwaiger | Hannes Lichtenfels | Ekkehard Hager (Body work) | 20-Sep-2013 | Austria | Salzburg | | 200 | klang 21; ensemble Garage e.V., Taschenopernfestival Salzburg | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 146 | Proces - Spektakl muzyczny (The Trial - A Musical Show) | | KAFKAESQUE MEANS CONTEMPORARY // Odd as it may seem, the idea of adapting Kafka’s famous book into a musical drama came to us quite naturally. Searching for a contemporary subject we found in Kafka’s “The Trial” early yet strong predictions of many of today's anxieties. His metaphysical quest for justice is a silent (or not so silent) outcry for sympathy and understanding. It is a story of alienation and persecution, but beside this, it is also – as all Kafka’s works are – a metaphor of our inability to communicate with each other. The sign of our times, a crippling social disorder in the era of social media, the cells and the Net. Among many things we found in “The Trial” is a warning: let us not sacrifice our humanity on the altar of technology. In search of the universality of its appeal our musical drama “The Trial” is set in an imaginary timeless world. The costumes and the multi-media screenings add to the feeling of alienation. Within distorted reality there is no logic in our characters’ (or their avatars’) actions, no rational consequences of their arguments or choices. We concentrate on the main hero, Joseph K. and his terrifying quest for justice. As a “sidetrack” to our story we follow his romantic involvement (or just another abortive attempt to find salvation through love). We’re “rolling in the deep” into the world of hopelessness and absurdity. As we follow Joseph encounters with all nightmarish characters we come to realize the liberation (by justice, unity or even empathy) cannot be found among alienated strangers. And that’s who we’re becoming. In the final scene (“Before the Law” – with a proper gospel choir) we meet the elusive Doorkeeper whose twisted philosophy is to turn all our hopes back to the starting point. Thus the circle is completed. The only way out is within us. Our idea was to see Kafka’s work from a new perspective, show how accurate he was in perceiving the dangers of modernity. He is talking to us as our contemporary – with concern and fear, but not without humor. And for the first time… with a song. The music in the show is as diverse as our life, drawing from pop, jazz and R&B. Milan Kundera, the word-famous contemporary Czech writer, suggested that Kafka’s work is in direct opposite to Dostoyevsky’s. For here we have a punishment without a crime. Our musical drama shows how this frustrating condition can relate to our own experience. Communication breakdown in the Information Age. Is anybody listening? | Teatr Muzyczny ROMA | Opera | Black Box | 90 | Polish | | 0 | 1-10 | Jakub Lubowicz | Jakub Lubowicz | | Jakub Szydłowski | Franz Kafka | Jakub Szydłowski | Grzegorz Policiński | Dorota Sabak | | Anna Sąsiadek | | Grzegorz Policiński | | | 15-Nov-2013 | Poland | Warsaw | Teatr Muzyczny ROMA | 150 | Teatr Muzyczny ROMA | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 147 | Sisters | An opera after the myth of Procne and Philomela | About the vicious circle of violence and cruelty. The loss of culture, language and your own place in the world. And about the special bond between sisters. Composer Anna Mikhailova and director Isabel Schröder were introduced to each other by Sylvia Stoetzer, artistic director at the Diamantfabriek in June 2014. SISTERS was produced and commissioned by the Diamantfabriek, production house for contemporary music theatre, and premièred at December 6, 2014 at the “Muziektheaterdagen Amsterdam” at the Ostadetheater. The work was well received by press and audience. Therefor, a revival of two shows was held in May 2015. The myth of Procne and Philomela tells in a fairy-tale-like way, how cruelty and violence arises in the minds of the people. From the press: "SISTERS shows that atrocity can be shaped both in a poignant and in a playful way. That's all here excellently done, especially by the actor and the two singers." Max Arian, Theaterkrant.nl**** "Most beautiful are the moments when the percussionist evokes arcadian atmospheres by placing little cimbals on the ground and letting them tinkle gently. Attractive are also the selfmade electronic instruments, which are mainly played by the two sisters, that miraculously produce rather archaic than modern sounds." Thea Derks, Cultureel persbureau “Play” is the pivot of this performance. Man plays to understand things. Performers switch between voice and text and relate in different ways to the story, sometimes completely immersed, sometimes distant, almost on the border between performer and spectator. The music - was created in a close collaboration between composer and director who both are seeking new forms for their ideas. - stands as in the tradition of opera through the mythical material and the combination of singing and music and within its own basis on the experiment with the sound, spoken word, vowels, rhythms, dynamic, movement, which present a new tradition of music theater, where merge of disciplines is what creates its own multiple language. - the score consists of several modules, involving the text, music and movement. Some modules are sound based, some of the modules are triggered dramatically which gives the performers space within the play. An example of this is the Tongue-less aria, where the singer (Philomela) has to express herself without tongue, finding vowels and other sounds through a string and other self-made instruments. | Diamantfabriek | Opera | Black Box | 60 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Anna Mikhailova | | | Isabel Schröder | | Isabel Schröder | | Judith de Zwart | Sylvia Stoetzer | | | José van Beek | Sybren Danz | Loek Vellekoop (Instrument building) | 6-Dec-2014 | Netherlands | Amsterdam | Ostade Theater | 50 | Diamantfabriek | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 148 | Tokaido Road: A Journey After Hiroshige | | 'Tokaido Road - a Journey after Hiroshige' is a 60 minute chamber opera. Okeanos have commissioned Nicola LeFanu to compose a work whose libretto grew from an award–winning book of poems: Tokaido Road by Nancy Gaffield. The poems celebrate the journey made famous by Hiroshige’s woodblock prints, 53 Stations of the Tokaido Road, depicting the road from Edo (Tokyo) to Kyoto. As the characters in the prints come to life, Hiro, the artist, becomes enmeshed in an unfolding drama. The opera is scored for three singers, a mime and an ensemble (6 players) of Western and Japanese instruments. Created and delivered by an outstanding team of practitioners, the opera combines an ambitious composite of art forms, including visual art and contemporary photography, poetry/libretto, music, mime and design and juxtaposes Eastern and Western cultures. The project is financially supported by an Arts Council Award, grants from eight further Trusts and Foundations and in-kind support from two academic Institutions. Planned as a touring work, Tokaido Road was premiered at Cheltenham Festival (July 2014) and tours to 6 further high profile UK Festivals / venues. The creation of the chamber opera is embedded in a parallel post-doctoral research project that analyses and informs the creative process and development period. Audience development for Tokaido Road is addressed via a varied, unique and creative programme of education and outreach events for schools, higher education and communities, utilizing existing Outreach frameworks. Through Tokaido Road, Okeanos seek to achieve the following outcomes: 1. We wish to better understand the ‘complex and murky relationship’ that exists between the arts and demonstrate this in the creation and delivery of an integrated cross-arts work which is an exemplary model of its kind. To this end, Tokaido Road is conceived as a study in extended ekphrasis, a term that describes the use of one art form to 'comment on' or 'illustrate' another. 2. We seek to understand how these artistic relationships change when translated through a second culture. To what extent are relationships between art forms universal or culturally driven? Does cross-cultural translation have an important aesthetic impact? 3. We want to present this powerful cross-cultural, cross-arts synergy as a rich and highly accessible source of pleasure, entertainment and education rather than a misunderstood and sometimes marginalized form of art. | Kate Romano | Opera | Black Box | 60 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Nicola LeFanu | Dominic Wheeler | | Nancy Gaffield | | Caroline Clegg | Kimie Nakano | | | | Theo Burt | Neville Billimoria | | Wynn White (Photographic images) | 6-Jul-2014 | United Kingdom | Cheltenham | Cheltenham Festival | 350 | Okeanos | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 149 | Lucie | | "LUCIE" was written in 2014 by Giordano Bruno do Nascimento. It is a chamber opera in two acts for four singers (soprano, alto,tenor and bariton) and orchestra. Unlikely, there are five different violin parts, piano and accordion in the orchestra. Originally, the opera was performed in a benefit concert for the organisation "Human Rights Watch" as it is about a major case of human rights violation. The planned project will also be a performance where we want to collect donations for this organisation (Human Rights watch – division for forced child marriage). We want to call as much attention as possible to this important problem. In the video you see a student performance of students of the „Hochschule für Musik FRANZ LISZT Weimar“. All is made and financed by students, also the video. Conductor is the composer himself, Giordano Bruno do Nascimento. As you can read in the synopsis the story is about two girls from different times with kind of the same cruel destiny. They meet each other in a kind of inbetween world. There is a different director’s concept (than in the video) where this world should look like a nightmare scene of a child's dream: Everywhere are moving shadows, you can’t see much, because of fog and there is giant furniture standing on stage, so that the singers look very small. You can act on and under the furniture and hide behind it. There will be parallels between the two main roles, which you will see in clothing and the different scenes. Lucie and Rawan (the two main roles) will be splitted up in three persons per role: One singer and two actors or dancers, who can show more than just one feeling. Also teddybears and light will play an important role. Unfortunately, this version couldn’t be performed yet, because of financial problems. | Hochschule für Musik FRANZ LISZT Weimar (Giordano Bruno do Nascimento) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 35 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Giordano Bruno do Nascimento | Giordano Bruno do Nascimento | | | | Lisa Mayer | | | | | | Bernd Stephan | | | 22-Nov-2014 | Germany | Weimar | Theater Belvedere | 0 | Hochschule für Musik FRANZ LISZT Weimar | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 150 | Exit G | Chamber Opera in 10 Scenes | The centre of the chamber opera EXIT G is the broken sound of the human voice – the acting and singing individual who’s tones get splitted by simple analogue objects to enable an emotional and tonal experience of the contemporary distortion of the subject. With the help of specifically developed mechanical vocoders (some activated by motors) to encroach the singing of the opera characters. By using certain preperations and applications also the sound of the instruments is strongly modified. To make this a special experience the musicians are placed around the audience which is seated in an amphitheatre setting. This scenic and musical setting is opposed to the narration of an actor telling of the everyday life of the young bike messenger Valentin living and working in Hamburg, Germany. For this modern hero his dangerous job is beloved, more than just routine, and without alternative. And this though this formerly cool profession is threatened and losing many of their clients to the possibilities of digital transmission modes or nowadays the 3D printers. Daily he’s speeding through Hamburg to make his living, defies the conventions and perfidy of traffic, communicates with friends and fellow bikers – but he’s at a loss with the looming end of his relationship with his girl friend Karolina, and the expensive housing situation in Hamburg does not make it easier to plan a shared future. Listening to the music and singing of EXIT G, the viewed scenery, the heard and partly performed plot, the musicians among the audience, all these items will not provide an objective story, but in every single experience of members in the audience these levels are connected to a possible unit – the opera. | Maierhof/Pohl | Performance | Black Box | 95 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Michael Maierhof | Christof M Löser | | Steffen Pohl | | Isabel Osthues | Christian Wiehle | Christian Wiehle | Steffen Pohl | | | | | Daniel Dominguez Teruel (Sound and Tape) | 5-Apr-2015 | Germany | Hamburg | Opera Stabile | 85 | Maierhof/Pohl, Zwei Eulen | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 151 | Song of the Jasmine | | About Song of the Jasmine: In India, the jasmine flower traverses the world of man & the world of the gods. Song of the Jasmine freely moves between past & present, composition & improvisation, music & dance, delving into the concept of longing through the lens of recollection, appeal, & total surrender. Ragamala Dance Company’s directors Aparna & Ranee Ramaswamy collaborate with jazz saxophonist/composer Rudresh Mahanthappa on an exploration that conjures the past in order to experience the power of the present. Mahanthappa heads a bold new ensemble that features guitar, S. Indian flute, mridangam, and violin for a live soundscape of jazz & Carnatic music. // From the Artists: In Song of the Jasmine we are guided by the writings of the 8th century Tamil mystic poet Andal, who erases any dichotomy between the sacred and the personal as she expresses deep longing, anguish, ecstasy, and the desire to merge the soul with the Supreme Consciousness. Her poetry inspires a dynamic world of contemporary interpretive possibility. Our commitment to entwining our Indian and American artistic genres speaks to the cultural fluidity in our hybrid existence and frees us to approach the poetic, visual and aural elements of the work as a sort of prism—different upon each viewing. Song of the Jasmine’s choreography and score were constructed simultaneously in a constant artistic dialogue that spanned more than a year. | Walker Art Center (Ragamala Dance Company) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 70 | No language | | 0 | 1-10 | Rudresh Mahanthappa | | | | | Aparna Ramaswamy | Ranee Ramaswamy, Aparna Ramaswamy, Anjali Ganapathy | | | Aparna Ramaswamy | | Mat Terwilliger | Maury Jensen | | 15-May-2014 | USA | | | 400 | Ragamala Dance Company; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA, Krannert Center for the Arts, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, USA, Lincoln Center for Lincoln Center Out of Doo | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 152 | Yume (Dreams) | Children's Opera | The Children’s Opera “Dreams” (Kodomo Opera “Yume”) was made, written, and performed by students of Kiyoku Elementary School in 2014 in Japan. 130 students between 9 and 12 years old participated, 8% of them handicapped children. Our first aim was performing the world premiere of a contemporary opera, written specially for the school. No ready-made opera, no musical, but an original work with noises, improvisations and its own story. The second aim was to have all children, who have had no previous musical training, participate in the opera project. The third aim was to have training and rehearsals take place during the normal classes at the school. It all began with a homework assignment over summer vacation. The students had to write down their dreams, starting with “ I dreamed yesterday night” The composer, Mayako Kubo, choired 7 dreams from over 130 dream stories and made 7 scenes for songs and two small orchestras. Index: Introduction – 1st Dream: As I awoke, I was a flying fish. I couldn’t get up. 2nd : I saw a rainbow. When I touched it, it went out. 3rd : My lovely robots. Suddenly they stopped. As I changed batteries, they exploded. 4th : At the picnic I found a 50-yen coin in the water bottle of my grandma. 5th : At my favorite summer festival many sweets and apples were flying in the sky and came raining down. 6th : The butterfly catching shining, huge yellow lights. 7th : I dreamed of getting on a spaceship. Many friends of mine were angry when I said goodbye. The project took three months. There were two groups, 9 to 10 years old and 11 to 12 years old, with two hours a week of lessons for each group. It consisted of three periods: 1) Selfdiscovery. What can I do? 2) Invention into opera. What is opera? In what role can I participate? 3) Opera rehearsal. How can I move on stage together as a team? The Project had three teams: 1) Lead artistic team, 6 persons; 2) 6 Teachers; 3) 15 Helpers. The students attended classes by three types of artistic leaders: dance, musical, and theatrical performance. After 4 weeks the 130 students had a chance to choose their roles themselves: dancing and singing, playing music instruments, backstage, design & setting, and documentary & listener's guide. The composer rewrote the music frequently to match the skill of the students. Simultaneously the students made the stage settings in their classrooms during art class. This project was the first children's opera in Japan. We received a lot of praise. | Mayako Kubo, Kiyoku Elementary School | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 45 | Japanese | | 7 | > 20 | Mayako Kubo | Kosei Miwa | | | | | | | | | | | | Mayako Kubo (General artistic director), Norio Baba (Artistic director), Watanabe Erika (Music trainer) | 28-Nov-2014 | Japan | Kuki | Kuki City Culture Hall | 1160 | Kiyoku Elementary School; Showa music college | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 153 | GOTHIC | | GOTHIC is an interdisciplinary work that explores expressions of gothic from ancient to contemporary times, through word, image and music. European, American and Australian gothic narratives play out in an elegant contemporary song cycle presentation, framed by three large ‘floating’ gothic windows. Across these, a dynamic visual scenography merges Australian and European landscapes, together with historic and contemporary graphics. Andrée Greenwell firmly places her score at the centre of the performance as a ‘theatre of music’, while the diverse artistic elements combine in this essentialist production format to reveal ‘a poetic of the gothic’, and this in contrast to hyper-real expressions of the gothic in contemporary screen culture. Greenwell’s score is for two vocalists, string quartet, and electric guitar/electronics/sound design, across which she inventively merges folk, postminimalist, post-punk and contemporary classical styles. She collaborates on a cinematic/electro sound design with music producer and electric guitarist, David Trumpmanis. The score of diverse sources is variously complemented and counterpointed by the evocative motion-graphics of London-based artist, Michaela French. Andrée has scored ‘Annabel Lee’ and ‘The Bells’ by Edgar Allan Poe, alongside new songs to lyrics by Australian writers: ‘The Birds’ (Hilary Bell) after Du Maurier’s short story; a ‘Totentanz’ (Felicity Plunkett) inspired by the German medieval frescoes; ‘Orpheus Song’ (Alison Croggon); ‘Death at the Beach Motel’ (Hugo Race, founding member of The Bad Seeds with Nick Cave) about the heroin overdose of Australian painter Brett Whitely; and Maryanne Lynch has worked with Andrée on ‘Chosen’, concerning the detainment of Austrian Kirsten Fritzl by her grandfather, with her mother and siblings. Additionally, covers of songs that express ideas of ‘gothic’ across history dynamically juxtapose Greenwell’s originals: Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’, the German medieval hymn ‘Maria durch ein’ dornwald ging’, Schubert’s ‘Erlking’, the Cure’s ‘A Forest’, Rod Temperton’s ‘Thriller’, famously recorded by Michael Jackson, and Angelo Badalamenti’s theme ‘Falling’ from the television series 'Twin Peaks'. All this is linked, and at times undercut, by the sound design, including an inventive integration of the Joplin tornado Missouri, captured on iPad in 2012. A rich music theatre journey of word, image and music, takes place across the concert presentation. | Green Room Music, Andrée Greenwell | Other | Black Box | 65 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Andrée Greenwell | | | Hilary Bell, Alison Croggon, Maryanne Lynch, Felicity Plunkett, Hugo Race | | | | | | | Neil Simpson | Neil Simpson | David Trumpmanis | Michaela French (Motion Capture design) | 27-May-2014 | Australia | Sydney | Seymour Centre, Reginald Theatre | 120 | Green Room Music | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 154 | Елизавета Бам (ELIZAVETA BAM) | | ELIZAVETA BAM is an opera for «moving choir» composed by Roman Stolyar after the absurd drama by Russian avant-garde poet Daniil Kharms (1905-1942). It was commissioned by Siberian Seasons music festival and premiered on April 21, 2014 in State Concert Hall, Novosibirsk, Russia. The plot: some strange people come to Elizaveta Bam’s apartment to arrest her according to an accusation in a crime: however, the specific of her crime is unknown to anyone. Enveloped in fear, Elizaveta tries to turn everything into a joke involving everyone into more and more absurd games. But all these tricks don’t help Elizaveta to avoid arresting, and, finally, she goes to a prison. The opera describes an atmosphere of the absurd growing in our society, in which a human is forced to live: all borders are blurred, all ideologies have confirmed their inconsistency, and the violence has become a way of life. Finally, one can’t stand this pressure, escaping into craziness, into a fictional world. | Siberian Modern Music Center (Roman Stolyar) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 45 | Russian | | 0 | > 20 | Roman Stolyar | Elena Rudzey | | | Daniil Kharms | Oleg Zhukovsky | | | | | | | | | 21-Apr-2014 | Russia | Novosibirsk | State Concert Hall | 1040 | Siberian Modern Music Center; The Goethe-Institut Novosibirsk | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 155 | The Secret Noise | | Not all music was made for public consumption. Ensemble Offspring delves into the world of secret music, uncovering cultural practices that deliberately shield music from public life. From sacred forms of ceremonial music to legally extinguished compositions to backmasking and private love songs, The Secret Noise unfolds as a promenade of quirky and moving scenes exploring the threshhold of music-making as a public or private exchange. Conceived by composer Damien Ricketson, Ensemble Offspring musicians Claire Edwardes, Jason Noble and Bree van Reyk are joined by dancers Narelle Benjamin and Katherine Cogill and actor Katia Molino in a surreal artistic space somewhere between music, dance and physical installation. | Damien Ricketson, Ensemble Offspring | Other | Moving Audience | 60 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Damien Ricketson | | | | | Carlos Gomes | | | | | | Fausto Brusamolino | | | 20-Nov-2014 | Australia | Sydney | Lower Sydney Town Hall | 120 | Ensemble Offspring, City of Sydney, Australia Council for the Arts, University of Sydney | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 156 | Out at S.E.A. | | The composers were working on the chamber operas during during a workshop (not public) between 9-18 December, 2013 in Budapest Music Center, Budapest, Hungary. One libretto, two operas, three characters, six composers. Out at S.E.A. chamber opera is a co-production of the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation and the Budapest Music Center, Hungary. Sławomir Mrożek’s drama, Out at Sea; a one-act absurd play for three characters (Fat, Medium and Thin) written in 1961. It thematizes issues of modern society: alienation, abuse of power, conformity and the limits of freedom. This work was chosen to be the basis of the Out at S.E.A. opera project. András Almási-Tóth wrote a libretto based on the original drama in 2013, replacing the setting of the original play, a boat on the sea, with a living-room of a reality show villa. Several composers from 23 countries applied, and 37 of them were invited to participate a four-day Out at Sea chamber-opera workshop in Budapest with two experts of the genre: Peter Eötvös and Luca Francesconi. During these four days several aspects of the libretto and the possibilities of a realization as well as the basic tendencies and techniques of composing new operas were discussed. After the workshop all of the participants submitted short samples of their ideas on selected parts of the libretto. Finally six of the composers were commissioned to complete the work and write one of the characters entirely with instrumental accompaniment. The result is 2x3 separate parts, 334 musical fragments in total. The professors were adapting these into two complete one-act chamber operas. Peter Eötvös on the project: The compositional idea is as absurd as the theatrical play of Mrozek itself. Three different people meet in the story, three completely different characters. They respond to events in a very different way, so it was obvious that each character should be composed by another composer. In all known operas one composer writes the material for all characters, so they have one hallmark. In this project each of the characters are coming from a different part of the world, from a different culture, and they try to “row the same boat”. The production is a true international showcase. Its participants are from Singapore, Taiwan, Austria, Georgia, Romania, Germany and Hungary. The world-premiere took place on 19 December, 2013 in Budapest. Series of Out at S.E.A. performances were / is about to be performed in Milan (`14 February, Rondo Festival), Paris (`14 July, ManiFeste), Brussels (`16 January, Flagely) and Berlin (TBA). The final scores were published by the Editio Musica Budapest. | Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation, Budapest Music Center | Opera | Black Box | 100 | Hungarian | | 0 | 1-10 | Máté Balogh, Diana Soh, Christian Flury, Koka Nikoladze, Samu Gryllus, Mariana
Ungureanu | Lin Liao | | András Almási-Tóth | Sławomir Mrożek’s | András Almási-Tóth | | | | | | | | Peter Eötvös, Luca Francesconi, Balázs Horváth (Professors of Composition) | 19-Dec-2013 | Hungary | Budapest | Budapest Music Centre | 200 | Budapest Music Center, Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 157 | Mihails un Mihails spēlē šahu (Michael and Michael are playing chess) | | Opera lecture about an outstanding chess game // This is a lecture about a world championship chess game that took place in 1960 in Moscow between chess superstars Michael Tal and Michael Botvirnnik. This particular game changed the game of chess forever. It introduced a concept of "creativity" into the game. This opera-lecture tells the story of the hype behind the soviet chess movement in 50's and 60's, about Tal and Botvirnnik, and why this particular game that was played between Tal and Botvirnnik in early spring of 1960 is so important in history of chess. There are two teams that are participating in the opera. The black and white time. Two conductors - leaders of their teams are conducting simultaneously their figures/artists. Altogether there are 32 artists on the stage, as many as chess figures on the board. There are soloists, musicians, dancers and conductors. When a figured is changed (killed) the artist leaves stage. At the end of the show only 9 figures/artists are left on the stage/board. During 1 hour 25 minutes of the opera, the whole chess game is being played on the board. This production has won several awards in Latvia: Latvian "Big music award" - best opera production of 2014 / Award for best original libretto / "Diena" award - for highest achievement in culture in 2014 / Classical radio music award / Latvian gas special award for achievement in opera genre in 2014 | Latvian National Opera | Opera | Black Box | 90 | Russian | English | 0 | > 20 | Kristaps Petersons | Ainārs Rubiķis, Atvars Lakstīgala | | Sergejs Timofejevs | | Viesturs Meiksans | Reinis Suhanovs | Mare Mastina and Rolands
Peterkops | | Kiril Burlov | Carlos Franklin | | | | 12-Mar-2014 | Latvia | Riga | Latvian National Opera | 250 | Latvian National Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 158 | Il se trouve que les oreilles n'ont pas de paupières (Ears have no lids, as it happens) | | One actor and a string quartet vibrate the crossed scores of two music lovers, writer Pascal Quignard and composer Benjamin Dupé. A polyphony of writings to interrogate the “how to hear”. A treaty whose mechanic is as precise as it is playful. Music is everywhere. In headphones, computers, supermarkets and even lifts. Has not this relentless convocation emptied it of its essence? Has not silence replaced it as the « modern vertigo »? Such is the theory explored by Pascal Quignard in La Haine de la Musique (The hatred of music). A curious literary object, between essay, meditation and confession, Benjamin Dupé freely orchestrates in a version for the stage. Using fragments, extracts which he makes collide with his own composition. For it is not about illustrating the text by a few music notes, but using music as a whole partner. The show results of their agreement and disagreement, their friction leads to the possibility of another listening. To the author’s hypothesis of disenchantment, Benjamin Dupé gives the only possible answer for a composer : make sound, that is move the audience in their inner selves. For, “as it happens, ears have no lids”, that’s the truth. | IRCAM - Centre Pompidou (Comme je l'entends, les productions) | Perfromance | Black Box | 75 | Frensh | | 0 | 1-10 | Benjamin Dupé | | | Pascal Quignard | | Benjamin Dupé | Olivier Thomas | Sabine Richaud | Benjamin Dupé | | | Christophe Forey | Laurent Sellier | Ircam/Manuel Poletti (Software developer) | 10-Jul-2014 | France | | | 200 | Comme je l'entends, les productions; IRCAM - Centre Pompidou, Le Phénix scène nationale Valenciennes, Le Merlan scène nationale Marseille, La Passerelle scène nationale Gap, Festival d'Avignon / SACD (Sujets à vif), le 104 Paris | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 159 | Mile(s)tones | | In MILE(S)TONES, a percussionist, a pianist and a trumpet player guide you into the fascinating world of the legendary American jazz composer and trumpet player Miles Davis. His adventurous, innovative approach to music is the production's starting point, leading you into a labyrinth of ever-changing spaces and moods. One moment, you may find yourself in the vibrant creativity of a recording studio, or on stage as one of the musicians; the next moment, you're creating a live soundtrack to a movie or you're in the celebrated musician's painting studio. In MILE(S)TONES, you will experience the endless, fantastic possibilities of improvised music through the compositions of Miles Davis, with Fulco Ottervanger, Simon Segers, and trumpet player Bert Bernaerts, members of the Ghent jazz ensemble De Beren Gieren, as the ideal guides. | Zonzo Compagnie | Performance | Black Box | 50 | | | 0 | 1-10 | | | | | | Wouter Van Looy | Wouter Van Looy | Evelyn Demaertelaere | | | | | | | 18-Oct-2013 | Portugal | | | 160 | Zonzo Compagnie; vzw De Beren, Centro Cultural de Belém, Kunstencentrum De Werf, Kunstencentrum Rataplan, Jeugd & Muziek | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Videokunst, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 160 | Starend Meisje (Staring Girl) | Een beeldend concert (A visual concert) | STARING GIRL is a visual concert where music and film tell stories about unusual dreamlike ghost creatures, inspired on Tim Burton's poems. Small miniature stories about eccentric children who grow up as outcasts. A magnificent band sings about the characters and their adventures. The music of singer Aline Goffin, keyboardist Joris Caluwaerts, percussionist Frederick Meulyzer and composer Jan Van Outryve, enter into dialogue with the visual world of the celebrated filmmaker Nathalie Teirlinck. Her films intrigue, amaze and takes the audience to a strange universe. In a sometimes hyper realistic and sophisticated style, she films her figures in symbolic places where reality takes magical proportions. STARING GIRL was selected for the Theaterfestival 2012, besides among others Hunter (Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods), Work/Travail/Arbeid (Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/Rosas & WIELS), Tornar (Seppe Baeyens/Ultima Vez). | Zonzo Compagnie | Performance | Black Box | 60 | Dutch | | 0 | 1-10 | Jan Van Outryve, Joris Caluwaerts | | | | | Nathalie Teirlinck | | | | | Nathalie Teirlinck | | | Rik Zang (Camera) | 8-Sep-2012 | Belgium | | | 300 | Zonzo Compagnie; Kunstencentrum Rataplan, Kunstencentrum De Werf | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Videokunst, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 161 | Zen & Tea Music Legend | | "Zen & Tea Music Legend" this is a combination of picture and sound multimedia drama version of the concert works about Zen tea and Chinese paintings "Painting of Han Xi-zai s Evening Banquet", Shanghai Beaufin Symphony Orchestra in 2015 year launch combining picture and music works in [Chinese folk music drama. Zen & tea theater] "music legend drama", including.Zen tea, painting, flower arranging, Tai Chi and the Chinese paintings. // "Painting of Han Xi-zai s Evening Banquet" is one of the ten famous paintings in China. It takes the way of tracing the long chain Han Xizai's feast scene who is the high-ranking official in the end of Tang dynasty. Divided into five segments: noted to Pipa and drum dance, enjoy Wang wushan dancing, dressing pause, flute ensemble, finalizing. Han Xizai to avoid the Southern Tang Emperor Li Yu suspicion and sensual to conceal one's true intentions, often hold banquet and guests indulge frolic. This painting is a whole process of the banquet. This scroll line accurate and smooth, fine and clever, full of expressive force. Elegant color work, and a sense of hierarchy, a unique charm. Because with it, just so that we can a glimpse of thousands of years ago the Southern Tang food and clothing, music, dance and culture. It is also the story of Han and Emperor Li Yu in this special art form has been preserved. | Shanghai Beaufin Symphony Orchestra | Opera | Black Box | 100 | Chinese | | 0 | 11-20 | Cai Donghua | | | | | | Xu Ming | Li Tingyi | | | | | | Ren Ruijuan, Liu Peng (Musical screenwriter), Zhu Li (Multimedia designer) | 29-Apr-2015 | People's Republic of China | Shanghai | | 333 | Shanghai Beaufin Symphony Orchestra | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 162 | Words and Beyond II: Nan Sul Hun | | STARING GIRL is a visual concert where music and film tell stories about unusual dreamlike ghost creatures, inspired on Tim Burton's poems. Small miniature stories about eccentric children who grow up as outcasts. A magnificent band sings about the characters and their adventures. The music of singer Aline Goffin, keyboardist Joris Caluwaerts, percussionist Frederick Meulyzer and composer Jan Van Outryve, enter into dialogue with the visual world of the celebrated filmmaker Nathalie Teirlinck. Her films intrigue, amaze and takes the audience to a strange universe. In a sometimes hyper realistic and sophisticated style, she films her figures in symbolic places where reality takes magical proportions. STARING GIRL was selected for the Theaterfestival 2012, besides among others Hunter (Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods), Work/Travail/Arbeid (Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker/Rosas & WIELS), Tornar (Seppe Baeyens/Ultima Vez). In October 2014 the production Words & Beyond II – Nan Sul Hun by the Korean composer Seung-Won Oh (formerly Seung-Ah Oh) was premiered in the Amsterdam Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ. In the centre point of Words & Beyond II – Nan Sul Hun are the poems and life of one of the greatest Korean poets: Huh Nansulhun (1563-1589). Nansulhun came from a, for that time, modern thinking aristocratic background. Through education she was able to develop her intellectual gifts to a, for women unusually, high level. Yet she was forced to marry on her 15th and lead an unhappy and unfulfilled life leading to her early death. The production combines Eastern and Western ideas on the universal theme of equality between men and women as well as music-theatrical ideas in a unique way. In Words & Beyond II, 8 Korean and European musicians/dancers keep audiences captivated in a slow oriental pace coloured by sound and movement. Instrumentation: traditional Korean jungga singer, keomungo, accordeon, 3 percussionists, 2 dancers. Costume and decor design by the reknown Korean artist Jinnie Seo. Jungga singer Minhee Park takes on the lead role of Huh Nansulhun. The production received raving response from audiences and press alike. Leading newspaper De Volkskrant awarded the production with 4 stars, writing: “Everything in this production, by the celebrated Korean composer, is equally perspicacious..” The Theaterkrant.nl was equally positive: “Korean music theatre of unearthly beauty.” | Slagwerk Den Haag (Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ) | Performance | Black Box | 75 | English, Korean | English | 0 | 1-10 | Seung-Won Oh | | | | | Ria Marks | Jinnie Seo | Jinnie Seo | Jerry Williams | Kenzo Kusuda | | Stefan Dijkman | | | 29-Oct-2014 | Netherlands | Amsterdam | Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ | 725 | Slagwerk Den Haag; Amsterdam Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 163 | Musterhaus (Model House) | | Global homogenization by means of gentrification is a widespread phenomena of the present day. But what does it mean to translate one place into another? How exactly do spaces facilitate functions? Relations? Is an empty space destined to become an H&M? A Starbucks? What role do artists play in such processes? These were the questions on the minds of Bill Dietz and Janina Janke upon the invitation from the LOFFT Theater to create a new work for the Lindenau neighborhood of Leipzig (a district on the cusp of gentrification). Over the five weeks in residence, Janke and Dietz created a site-specific participatory work that was performed by both a choir of local inhabitants of the district as well as the theater audience four times throughout a massive, empty department store. Dietz and Janke gathered material from interviews with diverse members of the local community (from members of political commune to a bourgeois planning to build a private house), as well as historical documents of experimental and utopian architectural models for radical modes of togetherness (Charles Fourier, the Shakers), and in a series of workshops for community members and local artists. Each evening of the final performances, members of the ad hoc choir faciliated the 1:1 scale construction and singing of various local and historical architectural models solely with the bodies of the assembled community. Audience members and choir were constantly repositioned throughout the 4,000 square meter floors of the empty department store in the shapes of existing and utopian architectures. Once in these positions, the dimensions of these virtual spaces were sung by the audience while members of the choir recited transcripts from the interviews with local inhabitants. Using a specially adapted formula for interpreting spatial distances as tones (wavelengths), the blueprints of particular buildings become inhabitable scores for embodied articulation. From one moment to another, an audience member might be a part of a „wall“ of an East German studio apartment (which might sound like an E and a F-sharp) or Thomas More’s utopian island (all A-s) or of a new single-family home (a D and an F). For the duration of the project the empty department store waiting to be filled with new content or to be torn down, became a laboratory for members of the surroundings as well as the audience to join together in a form of auditory community and to test out various models and structures for being together. | Bill Dietz und Janina Janke (Oper Dynamo West), LOFFT - Das Theater | Performance | Site Specific, Moving Audience, Audience Participation | 70 | German | | 0 | 11-20 | Bill Dietz | | | | | Janina Janke | | | | | | | | Johannes Müller (Artistic participation) | 4-Dec-2014 | Germany | Leipzig | | 60 | Oper Dynamo West, LOFFT - Das Theater | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 164 | The Appearance of Appetence | | In a deep night, in a downtime studios costume shop, a shaped doll which was made by a dresser was first to come alive. But he found that he was boring because he couldn’t find anybody else throughout the whole space, meanwhile, he discovered that the skins put on by the dresser possess extraordinary ability accidentally, hence, he made the other three dolls moved up with his ability. But he didn’t know that the doll who put on the skins also had appetence at the same time, and each doll had different perception of appetence, some like idealist, some like realists, some like authoritarian. So there were Intrigue, unscrupulous, plunder, enemies among everybody. Ultimate, the one who surviving only, obtained even the most powerful skins, failed to save the man she loves most, she became upset and remorse, she didn’t know the significance of the skins to her, was the appetence there itself exactly or just it was the carrier of skins, or because of there was skins, there was appetence, and with the incremental of skins, appetence also will be incremented? | Lifeng Zhao, Chengqiang Xie, Zhuojun Li, Wenzhen Chen, Di Xia, Zhensheng Deng, Wenying Zheng, Wangzhi Wen | Performance | Site Specific | 60 | No language | | 0 | 1-10 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Artistic Team: Lifeng Zhao, Chengqiang Xie, Zhuojun Li, Wenzhen Chen, Di Xia, Zhensheng Deng, Wenying Zheng, Wangzhi Wen | 30-Jun-2014 | People's Republic of China | | | 150 | | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 165 | ARCHITEKTURA ŚWIATŁA (ARCHITECTURE OF LIGHT) | | ARCHITECTURE OF LIGHT is the 3rd part of the opera project ORLANDO. ORLANDO consists of 4 parts: 1. ARCHITECTURE OF DARKNESS for 16 loudspeakers on 4 levels in a pyramid (planned for 2017/2018). 2. ARCHITECTURE OF LOVE for 4 stage soloists, 8 vocal soloists, instrumental ensemble and electronic sounds (planned for 2015-2017). 3. ARCHITECTURE OF LIGHT for 2 soloists, instrumental ensemble and electronic sounds (2011-2013). 4. ARCHITECTURE OF ETERNITY (planned for 2019/2020). The work on ORLANDO has begun in 2011, the completion of the whole cycle is planned for 2020. Though the third in the cycle, ARCHITECTURE OF LIGHT was composed as the first. It had its premiere on the 8th of November 2013 in the hall no.2 of the International Fair in Poznań /Poland/ as a coproduction of the Polish Dance Theatre with the High School of Music in Poznań with support of the Polish Ministry of Culture, Institute for Music and Dance and the Kunststiftung NRW. The premiere of the final version took place in the Kunststation St. Peter in Cologne /Germany/ on 28th of March 2014 with the support of Kunststiftung NRW, General Consulate of the Polish Republic in Cologne, Kunststation St. Peter, Polish institute in Düsseldorf, ON-Neue Musik Köln, Foundation for the Polish-German Cooperation and the RWE-Foundation . The main component of the piece is the series of eight rituals of which the first seven are performed by homogeneous instrumental groups building the super-instruments in the space, and the eighth by the soloists. The piece unfolds organically on three levels: 1. The level of the instrumental ensemble from which the groups of instruments. separate to move around and through the audience during the performing of the rituals. 2. The level of the soloists who act from the galleries like two angels. 3. The level of the electronic music – four loudspeaker(groups) around the audience, set between the level 1 and 2. There is no dramatic action in a common sense. The piece is a ritual music theatre of the sound. | Tomas PRASQUAL | Performance | Site Specific | 85 | English | | 0 | > 20 | PRASQUAL | PRASQUAL | | PRASQUAL | | | | Paulina Plizga | | PRASQUAL | | Sebastian Walter | | | 8-Nov-2013 | Poland | | | 500 | Polish Dance Theatre, ON Neue Musik Köln; High School of Music in Poznan, Poland, Kunststiftung NRW | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 166 | El Zaglama | | Dans le spectacle El Zaglama nous travaillons sur plusieurs axes : premièrement des arts de la présence à Voir avec une dizaine de chants, de la parole, des mouvements, des gestes et de la danse ainsi que des costumes et de la lumière. Toutes ces composantes se trouvent liées par une fable à venir que le spectateur construira dans la durée. Deuxième objectif et non le moindre, nous avons explorés une mémoire orale éparpillée qui n’a pratiquement jamais été réunis dans un corpus : la relation à l’Autre à travers les chants populaires. L’Autre comme colon, protecteur, soldat mais aussi comme axe de désir. Parallèlement nous avons pris comme point de départ du mouvement : la danse traditionnelle. Mais tout ce côté du patrimoine immatériel ne m’a toujours intéressé que par le fait de ce que je pouvais en faire dans l’ici et maintenant c’est-à-dire lui chercher sa contemporanéité sans pervertir son âme. La recherche avec Rochdi Belgasmi et Cheb Bchir pendant tous ces mois de travail se résumerait en : comment donner un discours et un sens immédiats à une oralité confinée, enfermée, sclérosée, en une image folklorique dans la plupart des interprétations artistiques relevant beaucoup plus de l’ethnologie que de la création. // La gestuelle dans El Zaglama: Dans El Zaglama les performers (Rochdi et Béchir) ont un ensemble de gestes à montrer. Le geste a un pouvoir révélateur, il fait partie des conduites humaines de même que les chants, les danses les incantations et les frénésies, transes, possessions. Ces conduites humaines n’ont rien à voir avec l’esthétique du beau et les signes mais elles en sont la source. Et le langage des gestes étant à l’origine de l’expression humaine, le performer accomplit des mouvements corporels, le plus souvent volontaires. Parallèlement aux signes intentionnels, d’autres signes qui émanent du performer sont indépendants de sa volonté tel que : - des réactions spontanées non préparés qui sont relatives au déroulement de la performance, des tics d’émotion, d’expression, des signes inconscients qui resurgissent sur le moment appartenant à sa mémoire qu’un concours de circonstances permet de mettre à jour. Le performer étant dans un état d’exception , un moment élu, qui ressemble étrangement à un moment de danger, ou tous les sens sont exacerbés et mis à contribution ce qui permet des liaisons, des connections dans l’affectif et le corps qui seraient improbables hors perfo. | Habib Bel Hedi | Other | Proscenium Stage | 80 | Tunisian Arabic | | 0 | 1-10 | | | | | | Lassaad Ben Abdallah | | | | | | Taha Harrath | | | 21-May-2015 | Tunisia | Tunis | | 0 | Arts Distribution Tunis | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 167 | Orlando | | Orlando is a man, is a woman, today, yesterday, tomorrow. „Orlando“ is a myth formed by Ariosto, Lully, Händel and Woolfs and transformed through eras, sexes and gender. Orlando defines him-/herself as by elusiveness. Search and quest on identity build the main concept of the play that premiered in 2013 as the result of a collaborative development process of scholarship holders of the Deutsche Bank Stiftung. „Orlando“ questions the sense and meaning about being part of an heroic epic. The main character Orlando is constantly asked by the persons on stage to fullfill his role as a superhero – but he decides to stay passiv. He incorporates a hero who demonstrates absence on stage. He lies down, he refuses, he hands the tasks of leading the plot over to the others. He/her is then tempted to take action again by the stage characters, who are confronted with an unclear situation. They are coming up with standard moments of opera. A love duett without response, a birthday party prepared by the hero‘s family waiting for the main character, finally Orlando is being travelled to the moon, a storage place where one might find the collection of all heros‘ minds. Is Orlando‘s mind present? Orlando is presented as the gap, the blank space which opens up our imagination. Do we still need heroes? And if so – is it about being chosen or about developing certain strategies to become one? The libretto of „Orlando“ deals a lot with the failing of communication. Using a lot of double-meanings and quotations the language of the characters leaves every individual on stage restricted in their own world and invites the audience to fill the words with their own content. Based on the search for a leading character the other persons on stage are constantly changing their role. In order to get Orlando involved again they incorporate different roles, initiate different situations, but constantly fail and fall back to a basic „actor“ position. By connecting different elements of the non-narrative plot, the music bestows a kind of magic plausibility upon the play. Units of Speaking, singing, mumbling, whispering, screaming are smoothly merging from one to the other while text is always presented with a „musical intention“. Popular genres and „bad taste“ music are interweaved in the composition. A landscape of sculptures structure the space by a slow transformation from depth to narrowness. Though the objects refer to concrete shapes they get redefined by the way they are used. | Theater Bielefeld (Deutsche Bank Stiftung) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 33 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Martin Grütter | Aurélien Bello | | Judith Pielsticker | | Christian Grammel | Aliénor Dauchez, Julia Rommel | Svenja Gassen | Judith Pielsticker | | | | | | 15-Jun-2013 | Germany | Bielefeld | Theater Bielefeld | 630 | Theater Bielefeld; Deutsche Bank Stiftung | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 168 | Therapie (Therapy) | | "Therapie" is a musical for one actress and two musicians. It tells the story of the psychoanalysis of a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder. The actress plays the roles of the psychoanalyst, the patient and four other characters. Apart from being an entertaining, yet serious story, the play also deals with form of theatre. A woman enters the stage and plays different characters who the audience first accepts as different people. In the course of the play it becomes clear that those other characters are just parts of the patient’s disorder. Only the psychoanalyst is still perceived as a separate person. In the end the spectator understands that the psychoanalyst is actually the patient and that everything that happened on the stage was simply her imagination. | Thomas Lange | Opera | Black Box | 120 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Thomas Lange | | | Thomas Lange | | Thomas Lange | Thomas Lange | | | | | | | Thomas Dorsch (Arrangement) | 10-Oct-2014 | Germany | Lüneburg | Theater Lüneburg | 120 | East End Stage Company | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 169 | Einer | | Kein wohin, kein woher, nur Durchgang. Einer ist Passant, Verbleiber, Suchender, Verweiler, Taster, Riecher, Schmecker, er taucht auf und geht wieder. Er wird stets von Ihr begleitet, der Geheimnisvollen, Unnahbaren der schönen laufmaschigen Vielleichten. (Vielleicht kann man sie befragen, berühren? Was passiert, wenn sie ihm Unheil prophezeit?) Wir sind Zeugen eines Pakts ohne erklärbare Regeln. Einer ist das Kind in uns, das spielt, der Jähzornige der alles zerstört, der seine wissende Begleiterin zu verführen versucht, der vor dem Vollbrachten flüchtet um es aus der Ferne zu betrachten. Einer kann mit dem Feuer spielen, Einer kann alles flüssig machen, alles wegatmen, umhäufen. Einer ist König ohne Land, seinen Besitz trägt er stets mit sich. Einer singt oft, er singt von vielen Dingen die wir zu kennen und zu wissen glauben. Einer rappelt, rappt und tanzt. Einer schwelgt in eigener Traurigkeit, Einer zeigt uns die „wehs“ und „achs“ des Streunenden ohne darüber zu spotten. Einer schämt sich nie, ist nur in höchstem Masse erstaunt. Einer ist ein Plötzlichkeitsphantast, ein Raser, der stets seine Richtung ändern kann. Einer schläft nie. Was hat die Gesellschaft vergessen zu tanzen? Einer tanzt. Einer ist der Derwisch der metaphysischen Obdachlosigkeit. Und Sie? | Ums 'n Jip | Performance | Site Specific | 70 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Javier Hagen, Ulrike Mayer-Spohn, Maria Porten | | | | Eduard Mörike, Ovid, and others | Gian Manuel Rau | | | | | | | | | 7-Jul-2013 | Switzerland | | | 50 | Ums 'n Jip | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Instrumentales Theater |
| 170 | Maître Zacharius ou l'horloger qui avait perdu son âme (Master Zacharius, or the clockmaker who lost his soul) | | The project is based on a short story by Jules Verne. The swiss clockmaker Zacharius is celebrated throughout France and Germany for having invented the escapement, and is fiercely proud of his successes. As artist, he is even comparing himself with God and believes to have discovered in his works the secrets of the combination of soul and body. But one day, all of the many clocks he has made and sold have begun to suddenly stop, one by one. Unable to fix any of them or to find a reason for the phenomenon, Zacharius falls into mental torment and becomes seriously ill. A bizarre clocklike creature offers to give Zacharius the secret of the clocks' failure in exchange for the hand of his daughter in marriage. Zacharius refuses, and the creature disappears. One morning Zacharius is found to have disappeared from Geneva. He has left in search of an iron clock sold to one Pittonaccio in a castle in Andernatt: it is the only clock of his that has not been returned to him, and thus the only clock apparently still working. In the castle he finds his still functioning masterpiece, but also meets again the clocklike creature, who introduces himself as Signor Pittonaccio. Zacharius, believing his life to be wrapped up in the fate of the clock, agrees to let Pittonaccio wed his daughter against her will, thinking the marriage will grant him immortality. But the clock bursts and its spring breaks out and flies across the hall, with Zacharius, shouting that it is his soul, in pursuit. Pittonaccio seizes it and disappears into the ground, and Zacharius, having become a slave of hubris who believes "there is nothing but science in this world," dies immediately. In our music theatre piece the principal musician actor and speech performer (Daniele Pintaudi) embodies the figure of the clockmaker Zacharius. Together with the kinetic sound sculptures of Martin Müller the music ensemble of 9 players is representing a great, bizarre clockwork mechanism. Zacharius introduces himself as godlike creator and demonstrates his absolute control of his works. Suddenly the clockwork mechanism refuses its obedience and develops e life of its own. In a final dialogue, the clock confronts Zacharius with the shocking insight that he is not the almighty „Lord of time“ as he was thinking, but only a part of the clockwork mechanism. | Leo Dick (Le Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain) | Performance | Black Box | 60 | French | | 0 | 11-20 | Leo Dick | Pierre-Alain Monot | | | | Leo Dick, Tassilo Tesche | Tassilo Tesche | | | | | | | Martin Müller (Cinetic sound sculptures) | 12-Jun-2015 | Switzerland | La Chaux-de-Fonds | Théâtre ABC La-Chaux-de-Fonds | 80 | Le Nouvel Ensemble Contemporain; Théâtre ABC La-Chaux-de-Fonds, Museum Tinguely Basel | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 171 | Field Recordings | | In a 100 austere, transparent sculptures, earth seems to float, a soldiers' graveyard in a chilling landscape. From the earth, sounds arise. Noise, rustling, echos from the war but also voices and shreds of music. In Field Recordings, artist A. De Causmaecker and composer A. Van Parys search for the universal emotions behind a war. The texts are specially written for the installation by P. Verhelst. War is destruction. Always and everywhere. Torn-apart landscapes, ruptured bodies, fear, pain, death. But always there are survivors, who search for a new beginning amidst the debris. Slowly they rebuild what was destroyed in no time. Life recovers, but lacunas remain, emptyness filled with absence. Consolation is hard to find, but somewhere, deep down, hope is still glowing. The Great War is the clay, which absorbed everything and where everything ended. The earth remembers the violence of war. The boys who died and were burried in it, their mothers who cried here. De Causmaecker built an installation with 100 small speakers which interact from within the earth with the movements of a dancer. Roel Das took care of the complex technical realisation. Tracking cameras follow dancers movements scrupulously and let the soundscape interact with her presence. Sometimes the music persues her, sometimes it leaves her abruptly. The sculpture is a living and moving field of sound that responds to her movements. But at the same time it also is an instrument, that enters into dialogue with mezzo E. Mondelaers through Van Parys' music. In three laments and a litany for voice, saxophone and Percussion, she explores the big emotions behind the war. Slowly, the soldiers' graveyard from WWI morphs into a graveyard for all victims of all wars that came after the one that should have been the last. The war that would end wars... Gradually the concrete setting fades away until only universal emotions remain. Because what is war but fear and destruction, after which we have to get up again and learn to live with the loss? Because hope is always stronger. After the performance, Field Recordings is also accessable for the public; the installation enters into a dialogue with the audience that walks in between the boxes. Just like the wounds of war never fully dissapear from the landscape and the craters and soldiers' graveyards will forever be part of Flanders' Fields, the people walking between the graves of the installation will hear the voices of the past rise up from the earth. | Anneleen De Causmaecker, Annelies Van Parys (Concertgebouw Brugge) | Performance | Black Box | 40 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Annelies Van Parys | | | Peter Verhelst | | | Anneleen De Causmaecker | Harvey Bouterse | | | | | Roel Das | Anneleen De Causmaecker, Annelies Van Parys (Concept) | 2-May-2015 | Belgium | Bruges | Concertgebouw Brugge | 400 | PERIGNEM vzw | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 172 | Requiem dla Ikony (Requiem for an Icon) | | Requiem for an Icon composed by Katarzyna Głowicka has been commissioned by Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw. It has been staged as a part of Project “P”, a special program of the theatre. Project “P” had its opening in 2012/2103 artistic season. It is intended for young, Polish librettists, composers, stage directors, set and costume designers and opera singers as well. Project “P” is a part of Territories cycle, another very significant artistic program of the theatre. Territories cycle is indicated for bringing the output of XX and XXI century composers closer to the audience. Territories cycle is referred to young directors and performers which is very often connected with their stage debuts. The opera is a portrait multiple of Jackie Kennedy, focusing not on her biography, but the way this woman went down in American history as the legendary First Lady and fall victim to her image. The production oscillates between real events and visions of a disturbed pshyche. Requiem for an Icon studies a woman entangled in politics, dependent on men, helplessly attempting to free herself of her image, to show the world who she really is. With subsequent scenes we enter a dreamlike reality deeper and deeper as Jakie projects images and figures. The protagonist is split as well. Jakie the singer is the real Jackie – lying in a hospital bed, fighting with cancer. Her doppelganger, an actress, is a woman-chamealion. Her experience – along with the story of real Jackie – undergoes constant metamorphosis on stage, bringing us closer not to an icon, but a normal woman. | Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 60 | Polish | | 0 | > 20 | Katarzyna Glowicka | Bassem Akiki | Bogdan Gola | Krystian Lada | | Michal Borczuch | Jacqueline
Sobiszewski | Dorota Nawrot | | | Jacqueline
Sobiszewski | Jacqueline
Sobiszewski | | Danuta Chmurska (Director of Children's Choir) | 22-May-2015 | Poland | Warsaw | Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera | 248 | Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 173 | KLIP | A cacophonic darkly comic
live collage | KLIP opens with a video caption which states: "This work consists of carefully selected coincidences. Any form of intellectual or mental insight or anything which resembles cohesion is quite unintentional." The piece is performed by 2 men and 2 women, on a stage set in which one of the focal points is a ham, which hangs down from the ceiling. The piece ends with one of the male characters himself hanging, much like the ham, while doggedly attempting to sing his way towards redemption. KLIP features both live and recorded music and song and is inspired by the art of Kurt Schwitters, the famous collage-ist and DADAist. Much of the raw material in KLIP–spoken and sung texts, characters and images – has been created by playing parlour games. These resemble the drawing and folding games familiar to children. A story, or description of a situation is created by each player writing a line or phrase on a piece of paper. The paper is then folded and sent on to the next player who repeats the process. The random products of these games were arranged into a structure in time. This structure was then itself repeatedly cut up, pasted and rearranged. The sound and music in KLIP are similiarly looped, fragmented and shredded. The end result is a world of image and sound which possesses a dream-like quality, sometimes whimsical yet often nightmarish. It is a world in which sense and cohesion seem to lurk just out of sight and which is ultimately and violently clipped to pieces. Drawing inspiration from the DADAists, and Monty Python, KLIP takes us on a descent to chaos, although the mayhem is always tightly choreographed and finely orchestrated. Funny, provocative, disturbing and visually inventive, with moments of great beauty, it has reduced audiences to both laughter and tears. As in Schwitters art, the playfulness with which seemingly banal material is recycled to reveal new meanings becomes itself a celebration of human existence in all of its absurdity, pointlessness and wonder; what Hugo Ball described as “a piece of tomfoolery from the void, in which all the lofty questions have become involved”. In 2012 the Committee of Danish Arts Foundation gave the following reason for awarding the KLIP their special prize in 2012: "Livingstones Kabinet have demonstrated what an original and unique feature they are in the Danish theatre landscape… Bravo." | Livingstones Kabinet | Other | Black Box | 60 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Pete Livingstone | | | | | Nina Kareis | Julie Forchhammer | Julie Forchhammer | | | | Mikkel Jensen | Erik Christofferson | | 29-Oct-2012 | Denmark | | | 90 | Livingstones Kabinet | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 174 | Aikainen 3D opera | | Aikainen [Finnish for "early/about time"] is a piece of experimental music theatre that spans many art forms: Visual arts, performance art, poetry and film. Its five parts are about different aspects of time and temporality: "Ending", "Generations", "space-timecontinuum" and "Memory". In another part you will experience live composing on an overhead projector, the ensemble will play prima vista. The debut performance in Berlin was the German premiere of 3D-video music theatre and instruments that have been 3D-printed only for this piece. Despite Aikainen being a multimedia and multi-art piece, its soundscape is coherent and solid. The musical language is based on prime numbers and the pendulum movement – both of the core elements being audible and visible in many aspects of the piece, from melodies and structures of the work to the stage setup. Aikainen is a confession of love to the human voice and its flexibility. Two on stage vocal artists and three opera singers on 3D video provide the whole spectrum of it: From "Sprechgesang" to overtone singing and from cattle call cries to dramatic opera voice. | Miika Hyytiainen | Performance | Black Box | 70 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Miika Hyytiäinen | | | | | Jaakko Nousiainen | | | | | Alicja Sowiar | | Jaakko Kulomaa | Seaum Shim (Construction of 3D-Printed Ocarina) | 4-Apr-2014 | Germany | Berlin | | 200 | Miika Hyytiainen; Finnland-Institut, Universitet der Künste Berlin, KlangZeitOrt Berlin, Grimeborn Festival, Argola Thatre | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 175 | The Haunting Melody "La mélodie fantôme" | | Let’s open up our ears. What do we hear if we spend some time listening to the world around us? During an entire day, six characters create the score of a horror movie: voices dubbing, sound effects, and original music soundtrack. Each of them uses his know-how and own intimate connection with music. Kate Strong, actress and former dancer who is in charge of post-synching “The Film”; her masculine acolyte, Matthias Girbig, present for the same reasons: Pauline Sikirdji, an opera singer who is there to dub certain songs; Sylvain Cartigny, a composer who is in charge of the soundtrack; a sound engineer, Thomas Blanchard in charge of the recording; Mathieu Bauer, a director who is there to supervise all the work. These six characters will be present to produce the soundtrack of a film we will never see, but we will listen to in all its dimensions, with bits of dialogue, music and sound effects. Beyond this sound creative work, a whole space of share and sensations is revealed to us. Here resound some musical memories, there we can hear the voices of some ghosts hidden in the hall… Tempers flare, melodies go from one head to another, from one character to another, from the movie to the studio, from the stage to the hall. The atmosphere is filled with suspicion and suspense, as everyone is waiting for what’s coming next, the intrigue tightens up and makes the audience dive into an unheard world… While we are more than ever surrounded by sounds, The haunting melody chases, in the middle of a recording studio, the music tracks and sounds that are haunting us and composing the soundtrack of our lives. | Mathieu Bauer, Sylvain Cartigny (Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil) | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 105 | French, English | French (for English) | 0 | 1-10 | Sylvain Cartigny | | | | | Mathieu Bauer | | | | | | | | | 22-Jan-2015 | France | Montreuil | Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil | 300 | Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil - Centre dramatique national | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 176 | Chants du Capricorne | | Alone on stage, the woman-Capricorno, wrapped in an impressive crinoline with an exaggerated sex organ, slowly removes her costume and begins a moulting process, like an initial path to the heart of a universe that is at once symbolic, mythical and dreamlike. Chants Libres has remounted Canti del Capricorno, a performance opera by the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi, which took him 10 years to compose. Canti del Capricorno is an important example of « re-invented musical notation », an important milestone for the creation of new forms of opera. Scelsi’s music is performed by the mezzo-soprano Marie-Annick Béliveau, a rising star in contemporary opera, supported by five pre-recorded musicians. An audacious performance piece requiring the meticulous skills of a watchmaker, Canti del Capricorno is a ritual, a staging of the sacred and the immortal, where music is stripped of all pretences to embrace all cultures. «From Canti del Capricorno emerges the power of incantation that draws us to our roots, to that within each of us which is the least explored, our primitive instinct. Faced with this archaic panic, the only viable panacea emerges from its ritual forms, which elevates the sheer terror to savred ground by taking away its individuality and making it universal. In a way, Scelsi becomes the transmitter of this age-old tradition. Glottal stops, nasal sounds, microtonic intervals, driving syllables or rolled rrr’s – the singing does away with all convention and reaches every culture, reflecting all of them.» – Georges Nicholson «Sounds and unusual rhythms, mostly vibratos and glissandos that are particularly delicate, produce a mental state that touches us as much on an intellectual and psychic level as on an emotional level; out of this composite turmoil comes the images that build this musical presentation, directed by Pauline Vaillancourt with the help of a quality artistic team. This music seems to invite a theatrical transposition which allows an audience member who may be a neophyte about contemporary music to appreciate what a concert can bring to a lover of that kind of music. This seems to me an intelligent way to bring us into a universe so subtle and strong, which may seem, at the start, to be absolutely impervious.» | Chants Libres | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 55 | | | 0 | 1-10 | Giacinto Scelsi | | | | | Pauline Vaillancourt | Massimo Guerrera | Massimo Guerrera | | | Michel Giroux, Jean Décarie | Nancy Bussières | | | 12-Mar-2015 | Canada | Montréal | Usine C | 411 | Chants Libres | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 177 | Please Kill Me | | Please Kill Me is the (poisonous) fruit of hundred of interviews with the people who contributed to one of the most tumultuous cultural and musical movements of the late 20th century: the American punk rock scene. The book is a tightly woven, extremely lively montage, in turn ruthlessly funny and downright tragic, in which voices respond to each other but rarely come in unison. They offer an incredible journey through everyday lives filled with drugs and catastrophes, drugs and (sometimes) poetry – those of the Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop’s Stooges, MC5, the New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders’s Heartbreakers, Patti Smith, Television, the Ramones and Blondie. On stage there are three musicians and a pair of actors/singers. Matthias Girbig plays a young man filled with naiveté and wonder, who moves from one memory to another, and sings in English. Kate Strong, a tensed, focused performer, keeps a sort of moved distance as she sings and tells the story in English. The voice carries the words without translating or betraying them. The play delves into the punk movement, turns rock and punk music inside out, revealing the life of the protagonists with surprising intimacy – an extravagant life filled with music, sex, humour and massive amounts of drugs – sometimes leading to overdoses – not to mention the trials and tribulations that go with living in the margins. But what is most striking in these more or less famous heroes of Rock ‘n Roll – and indeed, at the time, many were far from famous –, is their freedom and creativity. Mathieu Bauer does not try to recreate a punk concert, which would be an impossible venture. Instead, he brings to the stage what is most crucial to him, thrilled as he is by the tormented lives of the musicians, however known they may be. | Mathieu Bauer, Sylvain Cartigny (Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil) | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 85 | English, French | French | 0 | 1-10 | Sylvain Cartigny | | | | | Mathieu Bauer | | | | | | | | | 2-Dec-2013 | France | Montreuil | Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil | 250 | Nouveau théâtre de Montreuil - Centre dramatique national | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 178 | Black devil | | 1.The purpose of planning: Modern people’s daily routines may make them gradually forget their emotion and dreams. Then, their routines are laid down the border line alive but simultaneously with not alive, and dead but simultaneously with not dead. At ‘Black Devil’, music theatre, this situation is expressed in metapor, the midheaven which is the border line of this world and the other world, life and death, meeting and parting.From the perspective of a death messenger who does not know what to do getting lost in the midheaven, to release human inherent desire for sex under the expression of farewell in ‘Gongmudoaga’(the ancient poetry of Korea,) can help the modern to remember their forgotten emotion, and moreover this emotion will be healed as ‘a dream’. // 2.Libretto: ‘Black Devil’, music theatre, adopts the allegory of Gongmudoaga and the creative motivation is from the question of ‘Why would the fisherman cross the river?’.The author creates ‘Black devil’ who does not appear in Gongmudoaga to take the fisherman. It looks like the music, the beginning and end of which can be unknown, is played constantly. In that music does begin the dreamy narrative of the black devil to take the fisherman, the departed fisherman to leave the drunken black devil, and the wife between. // 3.The concept of the author: The story is as follows; about the boundary of a water, a drink, and a dream, about this world, the other world, and the midheaven, about those who cross to the afterlife(fisherman, wife), about one who comes over this life, about the fisherman and the wife and black devil who never meet, about their own dream, about their ideas of sex. // 4.The idea of the composition: Seemingly the river flows with one current, but it flows at s different rate as the depth of the river. Likewise, this music theatre also the one music is composed of the constantly varying linear stream.At ‘Black devil’, music theatre,the typical ways to express the human voice are not only the song(baritone),the pansori but also the sound coming from the smallest unit of the language. These are treated semantically and phonetically.Through the musical trend,the character’s emotion is conveyed and is expressed into the varying tone. The sound and emotion from the ‘body’ by pulse, breath, echo, and feeling produces the gesture(motion), and is combined and collided with the sound. | Shin Nara | Performance | Black Box | 50 | Korean | | 0 | 1-10 | Shin Nara | | | Kim Kyung Joo | | Lee Joon Woo | Han Suk Kyung | Kim Sun Me, Song Ji Hwan, Kim Min Ji, Park Sang A | | | Bae Won Se | Ryu Sung Kook | Kim Jong Hyun | Kim Sun Me, Song Ji Hwan, Kim Min Ji, Park Sang A (Body painting) | 20-Jun-2015 | South Korea | | | 80 | Musiktheater, Artspace Seo-Ro | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 179 | Tipping Point | | Kathy Hinde's music merges machinery and natural stimuli to create stunning sound and visual aesthetics. Her music and visual art grows from a partnership between nature and technology. Tipping Point invites us to consider our relationship with water and the necessity of balancing how we use the world's water resources. Tipping Point explores the sonic complexities and possibilities of combining glass vessels with shifting water levels. Sound tones are produced live via a microphone that feeds back inside each glass vessel. As the water levels change, the feedback is tuned to different pitches based on the resonant frequency of the remaining space in each glass vessel. The work forms both a sound sculpture and the basis of a live performance. A Cryptic commission for Sonica, Tipping Point is a collaboration with John Rowden at the Scientific Glass Workshop in the School of Physics at the University of Bristol with software designed by Matthew Olden. As an installation, Tipping Point is controlled from an organically shifting system that changes how many glass vessels are resonating at any one time. Varying from all twelve vessels, to just one or two, the soundscape shifts from a shimmering choral texture to a plaintive solo or duet of rising and falling scales. For the live performance, Kathy Hinde controls all the aspects of the installation live including the speed of the motors, the positions of the mechanical arms, the water levels, and how many glass vessels are sounding. She also works with a range of guitar pedals to re-pitch the sounds, accentuate different frequencies using EQ, and add different types of reverb to generate a larger, more widely ranging soundscape that fills the space. Tipping Point has received an Honorary Mention Prix Ars Electronica 2015. | Cryptic (Caroline Thompson) | Other | Black Box | 25 | No language | | 0 | 0 | Kathy Hinde | | | | | | | | | | | | | Kathy Hinde (Installation designer), Matthew Olden (Software designer) | 9-May-2014 | United Kingdom | Glasgow | | 140 | Cryptic | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 180 | Wide Awake: A Civil War Cabaret | | Wide Awake asserts that the Civil War did not end at Appomattox: it continues to be fought in popular culture. Using music and text from the founding of the country to the music and ideas of 2015, The Bearded Ladies explore the lasting legacy of the Civil War on American popular culture. Wide Awake traces a troupe, of queer cabaret performers, whose stage show about the Civil War starts taking itself too seriously: they are unable to tear themselves from the ghosts and battles of history. The show takes place on what the piece claims as a real historical site: “the America House.” As the performers become increasingly immersed, the Civil War inhabits them as they work out their relationship to history and their roles as inheritors of this legacy through the lens of more than one-hundred and fifty years of music. Although the themes the characters grapple with are not trifling, we embrace the comedic and musical appeal of cabaret to tell this story. Speaking about the cultural legacy and conflict handed down from the Civil War, project director and co-writer John Jarboe states –“Even during the complex negotiations for Reconstruction, even after the turn of the century, Northerners and Southerners were working out their resentments, longings, and rages musically; music reinforced boundaries, loyalties, and whole world views. This musical war, which has been present throughout nearly two hundred years of American history, is the conflict that Wide Awake attempts to bring to light and examine. Like the Northern protesters for whom the cabaret is named, The Bearded Ladies ask: are we awake? We hope our audiences will leave the theatre and examine their music collections in a new light, and then look at American politics in terms of this larger historical context.” In light of the recent revelations of injustice and prejudice in American judicial and legislative bodies, attempting to fit the Civil War into a tidy narrative is insufficient. Wide Awake urges audience members to shake off the idea of the war as a separate time and place, and see how it continues to shape our contemporary lives. // The Bearded Ladies create performative poisoned cookies. We implicate ourselves and our audience in our often unexamined relationship with pleasure, popular culture and the social implications within: we tackle questions of received culture, sex, gender, identity, and artistic invention, and we do it with wit, glitter, and a ton of cardboard. | Bearded Ladies Cabaret | Other | Proscenium Stage | 75 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Heath Allen | | | John Jarboe, Jessica Hurley, Mary Tuomanen | | Heath Allen, John Jarboe | | Rebecca Kanach | Sarah Ollove | Virgil Gadson, Samantha Sheperd | | | Daniel Perelstein | Jenna Horton (Installation designer), Martina Plag (Puppet and Props designer) | 28-Mar-2013 | USA | Philadelphia | Innovation Studio of the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts | 75 | The Bearded Ladies Cabaret; The Wilma Theatre, The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 181 | The Demo | | The Demo is an electronic opera by composer/performers Mikel Rouse and Ben Neill. The piece is inspired by the remarkable story of computer pioneer Douglas Engelbart’s prophetic vision of a world interconnected through personal computers. His 1968 demonstration in San Francisco rolled out virtually all that would define modern computing including videoconferencing, text editing, and something called a "mouse." Using emerging digital technologies to explore live performance with sampled media and original music, The Demo reveals the origin of computing and the internet as a unique hybrid performance event. It was premiered at the Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University in April 2015. Using the original 1968 video as a 100 minute sample, The Demo depicts Engelbart dreaming forward and backward, evoking memories of his personal journey and visions of where his ideas would lead. A gentle, dreamy character with a utopian vision, Engelbart pursued his idea that computers could augment human behavior as a crusade. His lab at Stanford in the 1960’s was a unique blend of Bay Area countercultural types with computer scientists, NASA and military personnel. Engelbart participated in early LSD experiments conducted by the US Department of Defense, and was seen as an outsider by other computer scientists of his era. The set mirrors the event as it happened in San Francisco in 1968 as well as the remote site in Menlo Park that is seen in the original video. The remote team is represented by a group of actors/singers on a platform above and behind Rouse and Neill. Throughout the piece the text and code from the original demonstration become the libretto, literally turning Engelbart’s computer code into poetry. The keyset used by Engelbart has been repurposed so that Rouse can send MIDI control for audio and video. Musically, the work combines elements of the era in which Engelbart’s demo took place with contemporary digital sounds. Influences from late '60s experimental fusion are mixed with complex electronic beats, Neill’s futuristic electro-jazz and Rouse’s richly textured vocals. The work culminates by depicting the overload of information in the current digital culture through a series of animations and visualizations of the internet created with the eDream Institute/National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. | Stanford Live, Stanford University (Mikel Rouse, Ben Neill) | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 90 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Mikel Rouse, Ben Neill | Matthew Gandolfo | | | | Mikel Rouse, Ben Neill | Jim Findlay, Jeff Sugg | | | | Jeff Sugg | Hideaki Tsutsui | Chris Ericson | Mikel Rouse, Ben Neill (Creators) | 1-Apr-2015 | USA | Palo Alto | Stanford University, Big Concert Hall | 800 | Stanford Live, Stanford University; Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, Arktype Inc., New York | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 182 | Flimmerskotom | | The stage is completly dark. Slowly a buzzing or humming sound appears. A single spot light slowly fades up – sound and light seem to interact – or not? A second spot light appears, others follow. The frequencies of the sound slowly change. The buzzing sounds now associate insects, it could be a place in nature. Suddenly all spot lights seem to move, a light sculpture starts to move towards the audience. Minutes seem to pass with only minimal changes in the landscape of sound and light. They both seem to become more rhythmical, the buzzing sounds anticipate a loose melody. The sculpture slowly moves on, until it reaches the audience. The light becomes unbearable bright, deep frequencies emerge. How to response to such a sensual confrontation? // FLIMMERSKOTOM uses the technical apparatus of the theatre stage: the lights, diaprojectors and a scaffold. Sound and music throughout the performance have their origin in the light. We recorded the sounds of the theatre lamps (that are normally seen as interference), filtered and composed a soundscape for the whole performance. Certain lights are also live-ampflified via copper pick-up-coils, that react to the electromagnetic fields of the lamps. Our main performer on stage is a scaffold equipped with theatre lamps. It is moved by a performer-body, who constantly appears and disappears. The lights throughout the performance are choreographed via the light desk and continually change their appearance: they form clusters, rhythmic entities and melodic progressions – light is confronted with musical structures. Sound interacts with light during the performance in very different ways, so that the viewer himself has to make connections between the layers. Sometimes the sound seems directly synchronous to the light, then they fall apart, the music is contrapuntal, then again the lights seem to directly produce the music. FlIMMERSKOTOM plays with the source and fictionalisation of sound and light and with their synchronicity. // FLIMMERSKOTOM is an experimental Music-Theatre Performance. The theatre space itself becomes a light and sound installation, but also a choreography in time. The elements and materials that normally produce visibility on stage, become hearable performers. FLIMMERSKOTOM poses the question: How would vision and sight sound like, if we could make them hearable? // The Project was invited to the KÖRBER-STUDIO 2015 in Hamburg. | Institute for Applied Theatre Studies Gießen | Other | Black Box | 45 | No language | | 0 | 1-10 | Gregor Glogowski, Benjamin Hoesch, Alisa M. Hecke | | | | | Gregor Glogowski, Benjamin Hoesch, Alisa M. Hecke | Gregor Glogowski, Benjamin Hoesch, Alisa M. Hecke | | | | | Gregor Glogowski, Benjamin Hoesch, Alisa M. Hecke | Gregor Glogowski, Benjamin Hoesch, Alisa M. Hecke | | 6-Feb-2015 | Germany | Gießen | | 0 | Institute for Applied Theatre Studies Gießen, Hessische Theaterakademie Frankfurt | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 183 | Fernweh. Aus dem Leben eines Stubenhockers (Longing for the faraway. Stories of the life of a stay-at-home) | | Longing for the faraway. Stories of the life of a stay-at-home. In 1822 Franz Schubert wrote his „Wandererphantasie“ (D 760). It uses the Song „Der Wanderer“ in which it says: „Da, wo Du nicht bist, ist das Glück“ („Happiness is, where you are not“). This longing for the faraway is one of the central motivs of romantic thinking and feeling. Today more than ever it has two dimensions: a desire to travel to exotic places trying to escape from a dull life; and a desparate searching for one’s own place in a complex world and to find an answer to the existential question of identity and self-awareness. Since the romantic days, by psychoanalysis and neurosciences the self has been thoroughly deconstructed. In a world, in which the unknown „outside“ is vanishing, the really unknown and strange is within ourselves. So „Longing for the faraway“ is an expedition into the self and the inner world. It starts off by picking up adventure travel tours and ends up with the most „fantastic voyage“: the journey into one’s own body as it happens in the science-fiction classic „The fantastic Voyage“ by Richard Fleischer (1966), where a space ship is miniaturized and injected into the body of a czech agent. // The stage setting of the piece represents a recording studio that at the same time takes up elements of the laboratory of the film setting of “Fantastic Voyage”. There are different recording sessions running: the radioplay “Stubenhocker” (“The stay-at-home”) by Herman Bohlen, a pianist records “Wandererphantasie” and at some point a mysterious Japanese singer drops into the studio presenting strange songs: The “Apparitions” from George Crumb. Gradually the line between the people at the studio and the characters they represent in the radio-play they are recording gets blurred and all of a sudden they find themselves in an ultimate travel to explore the secret of the soul. // The composer Michael Emanuel Bauer bases his own compositions on the three central pieces: “Wandererphantasie” “Apparitions” and parts of the film music of “The fantastic Voyage”. The score is a mixture of improvisation instructions and fixed pieces. It includes everyday sounds as typical for radio plays and works with live electronics (Ableton live and MAX for live). // The piece uses different systems of loudspeakers (e.g. a front system and a system of about 30 small speakers above the heads of the audience) to create different acoustic spaces and to work with separating the voices from the bodies. | Neuköllner Oper Berlin (Matthias Rebstock) | Performance | Black Box | 100 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Michael Emanuel Bauer | | | Hermann Bohlen, Matthias Rebstock | | Matthias Rebstock | Sabine Beyerle, Sabine Hilscher, David Reuter | Sabine Hilscher | | | Sabine Beyerle, David Reuter | | | Lam Tran Dinh (Choir training) | 23-Aug-2012 | Germany | Berlin | Neuköllner Oper | 200 | Neuköllner Oper Berlin | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 184 | Psyche: A Modern Rock Opera | | “Psyche: A Modern Rock Opera” is a sung-through work that exists in the intersections of fine art, performance art and commercial theater. It presents a hybrid of musical idioms, from neo-classical to rock to minimalism and R&B. The staging for the premier production included aerial work, complex choreography, puppetry, and elaborate sets – an ambitious approach for an opening in a small 98-seat Los Angeles theater. It examines the late Greek myth of Psyche and Eros, the foundation myth for all of the princess fairytales to be spun in the millennia to come, and so familiar to modern audiences through sources such as Grimm’s Fairytales and Walt Disney’s films. In ancient Greece the word “psyche” meant both soul and butterfly. The butterfly, the eternal symbol of the soul, the being that is born from the chrysalis, is frequently used in artworks fluttering out of the mouths of the dead, representing departure, freedom and rebirth. The composer approached the work from a decidedly Jungian perspective, utilizing Erich Neumann’s deep analysis of the myth as source material. The opera was incubated during an artist-in-residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. The composer took advantage of the many opportunities in Paris to gaze at, and meditate on, great artworks about Psyche and her story. The opera is bounded by the statement: “Dreams are private myths. Myths are public dreams.” This quote is the first text that the audience sees displayed on the supertitle as they enter the theater. This experience, therefore, will be a fantastical public dreamscape. The Psyche story follows the classic hero’s rubric, with one major difference: the hero is a female. Psyche’s boon to the world is her child, a child god with it’s own cults and rituals. Psyche, the personification of the Soul, and Eros, the personification of Love, fuse to create a new god, a new representation for mankind to ponder: the notion of bliss. One’s bliss is the inner truth of the soul. Psyche is a universal and relatable tale, touching on archetypal subject matter so deep, and so fundamentally human, that the story is continually revisited in culture after culture, and iteration after iteration, with humanity eternally thirsty for its embedded restorative messages. The composer is interested in these root human existential experiences, the fever dreams of the eternal collective unconscious, and is interested in drawing them forward for audiences in new, refreshing ways. | Cindy Shapiro | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 155 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Cindy Shapiro | Jack Wall | | Cindy Shapiro | | Michael Matthews | Stephen Gifford | E.B. Brooks | | Janet Roston | | Tim Swiss | Cricket Myers | Whitney Kirk (Aerial direction) | 22-Aug-2014 | USA | Los Angeles | Greenway Court Theatre | 98 | Psyche Productions, LLC; Greenway Arts Alliance | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 185 | Des Teufels Nacht (The Devil's Night) | | The Devil's Night is a short opera, which takes part during the First World War. A young couple gets separated: Franz (tenor) has to leave to get part of the army. His young wife Anna (soprano) stays at home and must earn money as a waitress in a pub. One day an unknown man appears. He is very interested in the beatiful and lonesome woman. She is waiting for her husband. Since weeks she hasn't had any contact with Franz. On the one hand she's afraid, that something bad has happened to her husband on the other hand she is young and full of desire and lust. The unknown man (=devil) offers a simple deal to her: if she stays one night in bed with him, he will bring back the husband in less than half a year. So she accepts the deal and gets pregnant. Six months later Franz is coming home. In the first moment he doesn't recognize that Anna is pregnant, but she reacts so strange that he becomes aware of what had happened. He fells into unstopable rage and strangles Anna. He kills that what he loved before. - Besides the three singers (Soprano, Tenor and Bass-Baritone) there are three musicians on stage (Piano, Cello, Saxophone) and a choir (50 singers). With the dark colour of the cello the composer creates the fatal atmosphere and the sharp and nasal sound of the saxophone (alto) underlines the fear, horror and hopelessness of each person. The choir is like in the greek tragedy the voice of the community and is just commenting. We decided to do the staging without stage design to concentrate on the denseness of the story. | Kammeroper Kleinmachnow | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 17 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Johan de Wit | Thomas Hennig | | Silke Wenzel | | Klaus Lutz Lansemann | | Barbara Krott | | | | | | | 24-May-2014 | Germany | Kleinmachnow | Neue Kammerspiele | 360 | Kammeroper Kleinmachnow | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 186 | El Último Acuerdo (The Last Agreement) | A concert for bodies, piano and machines | This concert is a panoramic action, a gesture of resonance to the music composed by Keith Jarrett during a concert in which he performed solo improvisations in Sapporo (Japan) in 18.11.76. Our proposal is a scenic agreement in which the bodies of two dancers and some machines dialogue with Keith Jarrett’s music. This agreement is the solitary dance of two bodies, like two liberties that inhabit the stage with no pretense of finding or dramatically confronting one another. The concert involves this movement of the bodies alongside with the one of some machines that present the beautiful and catastrophic movement of their own decadence – in other words, a constant movement that progresses towards self-destruction. The Last Agreement proposes a possible dissection of the musical composition of the concert performed in 18.11.76. This dissection allows us to construct a different nudity to the one of the image of a body without clothes. The nudity we propose is that of the machine’s mechanism, be this machine scenic, somatic or mechanic. All of this is an act that enters into the polyphonic structure of every movement – from the silence of the streets in the winter to the agitation of a worn body – in order to go back to the experience of what a surveillance camera or what an endoscope would make visible. In The Last Agreement, the human scale measures everything; it is the scale that measures the concert (the music or the sonorous stimulus) and the volume of an immense space. Everything is measured by the solitude of the human body, loneliness with no possibility of ceasing. This is how, in the end, this project gives us an idea of life: despite being surrounded by seven billion human beings we remain alone in our personal journey and in that what happens to us. To refuse invisibility the body acts by imagining narratives and filling the stage with senses, a stage that exceeds the physical architecture, by having always too much height, too much depth and too much width. The somatic machine constructs its identity thanks to volumes that always overwhelms it. The beginning world is, thus, nothing but solitude as so it is its destiny. The sonorous stimulus manifests itself and comes into relation with other components that create mental images, precisely because we move this stimulus to the center of the event. We create a space-time in which the stimulus is a detailed and privileged construction, and where hearing is no longer the habit of appropriating things. | La Máquina Somática | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 75 | Spanish | | 0 | 1-10 | Keith Jarrett | | | | | Natalia Orcozc, Javier Gutiérrez, Alexander Gümbel | | Rafael Arévalo | | | Filipe Camacho | | Santiago Botero | | 23-Apr-2015 | Colombia | Bogotá | Teatro Municipal Jorge Eliécer Gaitán | 1700 | La Máquina Somática; Teatro Municipal Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Tanztheater |
| 187 | Osmanthus Fragrans Rain | | The Chinese Musical Theatre 'Osmanthus fragrans rain' is a musical created and played by The flute association of Shanghai university. The story was happened in Southern Song Dynasty. It's about the destruction of a music band and growth of a girl. All of the music in this performance is played by Chinese traditional musical instruments. This performance was first played on 19.4.2015 in XuJiahui culture center and was sent to participate in the 12th College student drama festival later ,which award it with second prize/the best stage idea prize/the best actors and actresses prize.This drama was last played on 26.5.2015 in Weichang building of Shanghai University. | The Flute Association of Shanghai University | Other | Black Box | 90 | Chinese | | 0 | 11-20 | Bai Wu Xia, Xu Huan | Xu Huan | | Han Dan Ni | | Sheng Jing | | | | | | Jing YuJuan | Huang Yi | Chen Jia Jia (Visual designer) | 19-Apr-2015 | People's Republic of China | Shanghai | XuJiahui Culture Center | 400 | The Flute Association of Shanghai University | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 188 | De Witt of Oranje (De Witt or Orange) | | ‘Tafel van Vijf’ combines theatre, music and our common heritage. We put the concept of freedom at the heart of all our productions, because current events demand a close look at what ‘freedom’ really means. The stories we take as our starting point are about rebellion and resistance and their effect in the world. // De Witt or Orange the project: De Witt or Orange is a production that is shown in theatres and combined with a guided visit on the same day to exhibits in a museum that are relevant to the historical facts of the story. // Synopsis: De Witt or Orange is a rock-opera about the 'year of disaster' - 1672 - the blackest year in Dutch history, when populism changed the country for ever. At the highest point of the Dutch Republic's development, the Netherlands was the wealthiest and most powerful nation in Europe. It dominated world trade and had a strong modernized navy. This achievement was greatly envied by neighboring countries. Louis XIV of France decided to destroy the Netherlands as a trading nation, in coalition with the King of England and two German Bishops. Louis invaded The Netherlands with an army of 120.000 men, the largest since Roman times. The Netherlands was gripped by fear. The young Prince of Orange took advantage of this panic to manipulate the common people. His faction produced a tsunami of pamphlets claiming that the government, led by Johan de Witt, had sold the country to the French. // De Witt or Orange tells the story of Henk, the servant of Cornelis de Witt, the brother of Johan de Witt, head of the Netherlands government. Both brothers stood for ‘True Freedom’ - that is, a land without a king - and Henk adores his master, who is responsible for organizing the land forces. But Henk has also fallen in love with the fanatic Gijsje, who is on the side of the young Prince of Orange, now preparing to take power. // The relationship between Henk and Gijsje is under great pressure because of the political situation. Henk is drawn towards supporting Gijsje’s stance, because all the indications are that the De Witt brothers will fail. But when his master is imprisoned, falsely accused of plotting to assassinate the Prince of Orange, Henk sees that justice is not being done. As there is no proof against Cornelis, he is about to be released from prison; but the family of the Prince of Orange organizes a riot in which both De Witt brothers are lynched by a mob. This destroys the relationship between Henk and Gijsje. | Tafel van Vijf | Performance | Black Box | 90 | Dutch | | 0 | 11-20 | Susies Haarlok, Wessel and Tjalling Schrik, Arthur Wagenhaar, Harald Austb | | Lavalu en Arthur Wagenaar | Herman van Baar | | Mirjam Koen | Guus van Geffen | Dieuweke van Reij | | | Marcel Dolman | Guus van Geffen | | | 3-Oct-2014 | Netherlands | Den Haag | Theater aan het Spui | 346 | Theater aan het Spui, Den Haag; Artez Conservatorium Arnhem, music theatre department | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 189 | Isabella | | Asociación Hoquetus & Camerata del Gran Teatro Falla (Cádiz, Spain), together with Festival Iberoamerico de Teatro de Cádiz (FIT), commissioned Lauri Toivio to write a chamber opera to be performed at the festival 2012 in Cádiz. The city was chosen as the cultural capital of the Ibero-American world (Latin America, Portugal, Spain) for the same year. The Finnish Institute in Madrid and the City of Cádiz had signed an agreement of cultural exchange for the years 2008–12, including co-operated projects. The patron of this agreement was the former president of FInland, Mrs. Tarja Halonen. She visited the festival in 2012 and was present at the performance of the opera in Cádiz. In Finland, the production had co-operation with Music Theatre Kapsäkki, Helsinki. The theater is known for its high quality productions especially in the genre of music theatre, including stagings of numerous chamber operas by contemporary FInnish composers. The opera got its first performance in Kapsäkki November 2, 2012, by singers Veera Railio and Juha Kotilainen, with Uusinta Ensemble conducted by the composer Lauri Toivio. One week later in Cádiz, the FIT festival highlighted both the cultural capital year of Cádiz and the co-operation with the Finnish exchange, through the first Spanish staging of "Isabella". It was performed by the again by Railio, Kotilainen and Uusinta Ensemble, conducted by the composer. The libretto, written in Spanish by Peruvian-Finnish author Maritza Núñez, was finished in April 2011. Toivio started composition the same year in September in Paris, and continued it in Finland next spring. The score was completed just under the premiere in October 2012. | Camerata del Gran Teatro Falla, Festival Iberoamerico de Teatro de Cádiz, Music Theatre Kapsäkki Helsinki | Opera | Black Box | 65 | Spanish | | 0 | 1-10 | Lauri Toivio | Lauri Toivio | | Lauri Toivio | | Katariina Lahti | | Sari Salmela | | Tamara Popova-Veltcheva | Antti Majala, Antti Majala | Tarja Ervasti | | Patrik Stenström (Photography) | 2-Nov-2012 | Finland | Helsinki | Music Theatre Kapsäkki | 50 | Uusinta Publishing Company | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 190 | Endings | | Part chamber concert, part performance work, 'Endings' is a meditation on cycles and the ending of things. Using portable turntables, reel-to-reel tape players and live performance, 'Endings' finds form for experiences both ordinary and extraordinary that cluster around death, dying and afterlife. A hybrid performance work, 'Endings' is built in part from one-on-one interviews: people's stories, reflections, and voices. These recordings are cut on to vinyl records and embedded within a richly textured electroacoustic sound design that is operated, accompanied, and extended through live performance and song. The performance features the songs and vocals of acclaimed singer/songwriter Paddy Mann (Grand Salvo) and composition by Peter Knight, Artistic Director of the Australian Art Orchestra. | Tamara Saulwick | Performance | Black Box | 60 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Peter Knight, Paddy Mann | | | Tamara Saulwick | | | Ben Cobham | Harriet Oxley | Margaret Trail | | | Ben Cobham | Peter Knight | Tamara Saulwick (Concept) | 8-Jan-2015 | Australia | Sydney | Carriageworks | 300 | Insite Arts | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 191 | Nest | | In a big cozy nest a female violinist and singer together go on a musical journey. They look for an ideal spot to hatch their egg, to dream about geese, to chatter like birds, to chatter and chirp like birds. They learn how to fly by trial and save. NEST is a poetic music theatre performance that evolved from CABAN, the creative lab of Theater De Spiegel. After the performance the youngest spectators can explore the nest. | Theater De Spiegel | Instrumental Theatre | Black Box | 35 | Dutch | | 0 | 1-10 | Hanne Deneire | | | | | | Karel
Van Ransbeeck, Stef Vetters, Wim Van de Vyver | | | | | | | | 31-Oct-2013 | Belgium | | | 90 | Theater De Spiegel | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Instrumentales Theater, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 192 | Rezonance na Pěší vzdálenost (Rezonance na Pěší vzdálenost) | | The musicians and dancers live on two totally different planets. This performance tries to tear down the barriers that usually stand between these two worlds. It is an attempt to get the musicians and dancers inhabitate one space together, not just one next to another. The musicians set their bodies into movement that is sometimes physically quite demanding for them. Also, the electronics involved gets beyond its standart place within a staged work. This time it does not only sound, it becomes a performer – it moves a metal plate or small objects, sets wood into vibrations… We are similar – a moving mass of muscles and bones, breathing, loving, resonating, imprinting our vibrations in time... One of the strongest driving forces of the project has been the issue of getting to know and accepting new environments. To dive into the unknown, discovering the new with humour and without senseless fright. The world around us changes then too. // "Such is destiny that there is no stability without trembling.“ [Vladimír Holan] (First half of the evening may consist of a rarely shown short film by Peter Greenaway “M is for Man, Music, Mozart” with music by Louis Andriessen performed live by the BERG Orchestra and mezzo-soprano Markéta Cukrová.) | BERG Orchestra, 420People | Instrumental Theatre | Black Box | 24 | No language | | 0 | 11-20 | | Jan Trojan | Peter Vrábel | | | | | | | Nataša Novotná | Zuzana Houfková | Pavla Beranová | | | 11-Dec-2012 | Czech Republic | | | 398 | BERG Orchestra, 420People | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Instrumentales Theater |
| 193 | Nachtigall (Nightlingale) | Music theatre for one male singer | The nightingale, a bird famous for its singing, sings about love. Each night. “Night after night I sing of love and now?" While she sings she asks herself for what is love. The love, of which all songs are telling, she does not discover in her feelings. It is not enough for her to sing about it, she wants to experience it. Same as in the romance of Oskar Wilde in the opera the nightingale hears the complaints of a man who is immortally in love with a girl. For a dance with her the girl demands from her lover a red rose. But there are no red roses in the gardens of the romance. "There was once a student. There was once a girl. The student loves a girl. The girl loves roses. Night for night I sing about love and now I hear a lover. He cries. He suffers. He loves.“ The desperation of the man appears for the nightingale to be the real love. The love she would like to experience herself. She decides to help the man in his search for a red rose to become herself part of this love. "...She wants a beautiful rose. He needs a red rose. I look for him for a red rose. A red rose!" In the romance exists only one way to get a red rose. The nightingale has to squeeze herself into thorns the whole night over, singing at the same time and die. This is the only way that white roses of the thorn bush can turn red. She sings, she dies, the student goes with the red rose to his sweetheart, she does not want the rose anymore. The student throws the rose away. That is the end of the romance. The great aria of love and dying, mostly the high lights in an opera, where feelings become most important and the unnatural lasting stretches here throughout the whole piece. A tenor who in almost all operas every evening sings about love takes in this mono opera the part of the nightingale. Dialogues only take place between him and single instruments. The four further voices (one male voice and three female voices) are only part of the instrumental company. They enlarge and color the voice of the solo tenor but do not take any scenic parts. A contrabass, a saxophone and a trumpet are distributed in the whole room (r | Deutsche Oper Berlin (Deutsche Bank Stiftung) | Opera | Black Box | 30 | German | | 0 | 11-20 | Birke J. Bertelsmeier | Martin Nagashima Toft, | | Birke J. Bertelsmeier, Nina Dudek | | Nina Dudek | Lars Unger | Belén Montoliú | Curt A. Roesler, | | | Stefan Hoppe | | | 20-Jun-2014 | Germany | Berlin | Deutsche Oper, Tischlerei | 170 | Deutsche Oper Berlin; Deutsche Bank Stiftung | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 194 | La Femme Atlantide (Lady Atlantis) | | La Femme Atlantide (“Lady Atlantis”) is a multimedia production created for a female harp player and live audio & video electronics. The premiere took place in May 2015 in Antwerp, Belgium. The piece is inspired on the poem “Atlantide” by Alice de Chambrier, a nineteenth-century Swiss poet. De Chambrier wrote the poem at the age of 19. It evokes the ancient legend of the lost continent swallowed by the sea. Our production focuses on the creation and re-creation of sounds, on the opposition between the actuality of live music and the distortion of remembered and re-produced sounds and images. The score is a combination of traditional musical notation and theatrical instructions including the recitation of text, the manipulation of the microphones and camera, and movements on stage. Aside from playing the harp, the player controls every aspect of the performance by triggering the computer software with various pedals. The software output results through a live video delay technique in a visual screen projection and a quadrophon audio setup. The performance follows the structure of the poem, dividing the work into 3 sections. Each section creates a different atmosphere, gradually building up the tension towards the last part, which leads to a virtuoso climax. The variety between the sections is achieved by producing traditional and experimental sounds on the harp instrument, using different materials to excite the strings. All sections are accompagnied by a specific kind of video close-up to emphasize visual differences between the parts. The stage setup is divided in two separate parts, creating a theatrical tension between live performance and visual commentary. The left hand side is assigned to the performer, the instrument, microphones, webcam and all the other technical equipment. The performer takes different positions, alternatively playing the harp or manipulating the camera and microphones. The other side is dominated by a large projection screen, displaying the result of the live feed and the video delay effects. As such, the left part can be perceived as a little movie set where the musician is both actor and director. The audience can watch the final result live on the screen. | Jasper Vanpaemel | Performance | Black Box | 27 | French | | 0 | 1-10 | Jasper Vanpaemel | | | | | Jasper Vanpaemel | Jasper Vanpaemel | | | | | | | | 22-May-2015 | Belgium | Antwerp | Werkhuys, Borgerhout | 100 | Jasper Vanpaemel | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 195 | Koningin Zonder Land (The Queen With No Land) | | Following Porcelain and The girl the boy the river, the director Wouter Van Looy is once again collaborating with the writer Paul Verrept. A devastating storm is tearing through the realm, a wall of water forces the king and queen out of their castle. And what’s more, out of their country. Their daughter does not feel at home anywhere, and in this new no man’s land she does not set a foot on the ground. Not even a toe. When her parents die, she crowns herself queen of a country that does not exist: a country only of words. ‘I am a living memory, a remnant, a last specimen.’ Following Porcelain and The girl the boy the river, the director Wouter Van Looy is once again collaborating with the writer Paul Verrept. The Queen with no land is a surprising contemporary fairytale about love and loss. To hide in an imagined past? Or set foot on alien soil after all? Any homeless person will recognise the young queen’s dilemma. The resident composer Wim Henderickx translates her homesickness into a blistering score. | Muziektheater Transparant | Performance | Black Box | 70 | Dutch | | 0 | 1-10 | Wim Henderickx | Wim Henderickx | | Paul Verrept | | Wouter Van Looy | Freija Van Esbroeck | Johanna Trudzinski | | | Wouter Van Looy, Paul Delissen | Peter Quasters | Bart Celis | Jorrit Tamminga (Electronics) | 5-Aug-2014 | Belgium | | | 70 | Muziektheater Transparant; Zomer van Antwerpen, Concertgebouw Brugge, Operadagen Rotterdam, Parktheater Eindhoven, Acht Brücken ∣ Musik für Köln, Silbersee [ex vocaallab] | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Gesang |
| 196 | Van Den Vos | | Inspired by the epic fable Reynard, FC Bergman, Toneelhuis and Muziektheater Transparant play a timeless piece with text by Josse de Pauw and music by Liesa van der Aa. After radical adaptations of (among other things) La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy) and Het Oude Testament (The Old Testament), FC Bergman now violates another literary classic, the epic animal poem Van de vos Reynaerde (About Reynard the Fox). This medieval folk tale was the inspiration for a show which - true to form - depicts man as a fundamentally anxious, indecisive creature, who in his search for fulfilment and satisfaction constantly hovers on the edge of the ravine that leads to eternity. Liesa Van der Aa and the Berlin genre-crossing Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop set this search to music. Josse De Pauw provides the words. Dirk Roofthooft, Viviane De Muynck and Gregory Frateur take part. | Toneelhuis Antwerp, Muziektheater Transparant (Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop) | Performance | Proscenium Stage / Site Specific | 100 | Dutch | | 0 | 11-20 | Liesa van der Aa, Daniella Strasfogel, Michael Rauter | | | Josse De Pauw | | FC Bergman | | An D'Huys | Jan Peter Gerrits | Ken Hioco | | Ken Hioco, FC Bergman | | FC Bergman (Concept) | 5-Dec-2013 | Belgium | Antwerp | Toneelhuis | 700 | Toneelhuis Antwerp, Muziektheater Transparant, Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop; Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam, Kaaitheater , Le Phénix - Scène nationale de Valenciennes, Wiener Festwochen, Operadagen Rotterdam, Stichting Theaterfestival Boulevard, Berliner Fests | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 197 | Dart's Love: a wild swimming chamber opera | | Dart's Love: a wild swimming chamber opera was commissioned by the Tete a Tete Opera Festival in London to close their 2013 festival. Composer/performer Kerry Andrew has an obsession with wild swimming (ie swimming outside, in rivers and lakes) and has a strong artistic interest in myth and folklore. Librettist Tamsin Collison found a way to combine these in a text inspired by the traditional rhyme 'River Dart, River Dart, every year thou claim'st a heart' with recent flooding in the South-West. The synopsis is simple: the River Dart is in love with a man who swims regularly in her, until his flighty girlfriend comes along one day. The River rises in jealousy and drowns her, and the man swears never to return. Kerry is a composer and singer who works in experimental classical and choral music, folk, jazz and electronica. She is interested in combining a mixture of non-operatic and operatic voices. The River - played by three female voices - has an unusual vocal character (lots of extra-vocal sounds, folky and straight). Her instrumental textures (for an ensemble comprising clarinets, electric guitar, piano and percussion, played by CHROMA) include wine glasses, bubbling bass clarinet, playing the strings of the piano with beaters, and with sounds influenced by minimalist rock, Japanese music-theatre and folk. While composing the opera, she visited her local unheated pool every day while composing to gather sounds to inspire her. Bill Bankes-Jones and Tim Meacock used evocatively simple design (falling rice for rain, swings for the River) and cheeky, dark direction (the musicians placed onstage as part of the action, a va-jazzling, selfie-taking Girlfriend). | Tête à Tête Opera Festival (Kerry Andrew) | Opera | Black Box | 25 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Kerry Andrew | Timothy Burke | | Tamsin Collison | | Bill Bankes-Jones | Tim Meacock | | | | | | | | 17-Aug-2013 | United Kingdom | London | Tête à Tête Opera Festvial | 100 | Tête à Tête Opera Festvial | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 198 | Himmelsmechanik - eine entortung | | The Deutsche Oper Berlin opened the Season 2013/2014 on the 22nd of August in cooperation with the Berlin based artist network phase7 with the Opera HIMMELSMECHANIK – eine entortung (Celestial Mechanics – displaced and relocated). // The opera has two musical parts set up in three rooms. Part one leads the audience right into Mauricio Kagel´s surreal 8-minute-composition from 1965. The sky seems out of whack: wrongly bent rainbows, half-moons hit by lightening and upwards falling stars populate his score. This naivety can also be found in the instrumentation and stage setting. Percussionists using steel plates and wind machine as well as paper and wooden pieces are the only musicians in this part. A world premiere forms part two of the evening: Christian Steinhäuser´s new composition DASS DIE WELT VERRÜCKT SEIN MAG. It starts within a walkable labyrinth where audience and singers meet passing through the installation of video and sound art which transports the perceptual disorder architecturally and makes the audience experience it on their own bodies. The last part is staged in an architecture of 80 speakers. By means of wave field synthesis (WFS) the idea of a dilapidated sky structure is transported into our digital reality. Inspired by research results of CERN, the libretto steers spectators and singers towards the search of deciphering cryptic world machinery Developed in joint venture with IOSONO, a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (IDMT), phase7 creates sound installations with realistic, three-dimensional soundscapes that give an entirely new sensory experience. Melodies and sound surfaces surround the listener from all sides and seem to interact, penetrate and almost make the listener become part of the ensemble. This completely new auditory experience is based on wave field synthesis, WFS, which dissolves the previously valid principle of the sweet spot. Individually recorded sound sources are completely rearranged in a virtual environment and flexibly manipulated in the playback. This creates new challenges in the compositional process and gives radically new possibilities for sound design in artistic productions. | Deutsche Oper Berlin, phase7 performing.arts | Opera | Black Box, Moving Audience | 65 | German | | 0 | 11-20 | Christian Steinhäuser | Kevin McCutcheon | | Christiane Neudecker | | Sven Sören Beyer | | Pedro Richter | Dorothea Hartmann, Anne Oppermann | | Safy Etiel, Hajo Rehm | Björn Hermann | | Sven Sören Beyer (Artistic director), Maurizio Gambarini (Photo Station) | 22-Aug-2013 | Germany | Berlin | Deutsche Oper, Tischlerei | 200 | phase7 performing.arts, Deutsche Oper Berlin | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 199 | Song of the Great Way | | For a long time I hesitated writing an Opera about Confucius. Such a mysterious, profound personage; the very life-blood of Chinese culture pumped through his veins, whose spirit was great indeed. Naturally when I went to start writing this a play about him, I couldn’t even put pen to paper as I felt so anxious. When I read “The Confucian Analects” and “The Book of Songs” for a second time I began to discover that Confucius, like all of us, was made of flesh and blood, and that he shared the same feelings that all people have. Confucius was not born a saint, rather it was by means of the ordeals he endured, the fact that through it all he always kept the interests of the people in his heart, that he worked tirelessly to improve his character and mind and that he held steadfastly to his beliefs. There were times of stress and hardship but only by enduring these was he able to reach sainthood. When a country has order, prosperity will follow. Without order we have no choice but to leave. In his own life, Confucius failed as an official as he never received the respect he needed from the kings who employed him. In the end, he spent the very last of his life force painstakingly writing his final works. It has been said that: “Even half of the Analects of Confucius alone could govern a country well.” and that “ “Spring and Autumn”(another great work of Confucius’) inspires fear in the hearts of any corrupt court official.” His works are brilliant ideologically and posses never ending charm. From this standpoint he was a truly successful man! Confucius ideas are gospel truth, great but modesty, rich but gentle. Let’s listen to some of his chant. | Hangzhou Yueju Opera Troupe | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 116 | Chinese | | 0 | > 20 | Tan Shengxian | | | Yu Qingfneg | | Zhan Min | Hu Zuo | Lan Ling | | | | Yao Zhaoyu | Qian Tao, Guo Biao | Liu Hongyu, Lu Xiaoiong, Zhan Min (General art direction) | 28-Mar-2015 | People's Republic of China | Hangzhou | | 0 | Hangzhou Yueju Opera Troupe | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 200 | Dla głosów i rąk (For Voices And Hands) | | For Voices and Hands composed by Jagoda Szmytka has been commissioned by Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera in Warsaw. It has been staged as a part of Project “P”, a special program of the theatre. Project “P” had its opening in 2012/2103 artistic season. It is intended for young, Polish librettists, composers, stage directors, set and costume designers and opera singers as well. Project “P” is a part of Territories cycle, another very significant artistic program of the theatre. Territories cycle is indicated for bringing the output of XX and XXI century composers closer to the audience. Territories cycle is referred to young directors and performers which is very often connected with their stage debuts. The opera „for hands and voices” treats about preparations accompanying the production process of the opera piece in a large state institution in Europe. The opera “for hands and voices” consists of five phases that correspond to the classical Five Acts (except Act V). Each act consists of four-five layers what corresponds to the classical scenes with the difference that layers in “for hands and voices” are overlapping and happen simultaneously. | Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera | Performance | Black Box | 60 | Polish | | 0 | 1-10 | Jagoda Szmytka | Jagoda Szmytka, Michał Zadara | | | | Michał Zadara | Michał Zadara | Michał Zadara | | | Piotr Stasik | Michał Zadara | | | 23-May-2013 | Poland | Warsaw | Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera | 248 | Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 201 | Triptych | | 'Triptych' is an experimental opera in three parts, scored for an ensemble company of five singers and electronics, with video projections. Loosely structured on Puccini’s 'Il Trittico,' it is comprised of a comedy, a tragedy, and a piece about nuns. Each section was created in collaboration with a different composer. 'Triptych' uses a range of virtuosic vocal and ensemble musical techniques, technological devices, and a theatrical language that is both experimental and accessible, to construct three contrasting pieces which share themes of obsession, alienation and the limits of communication: I. Reunion (music by Christian Mason): A young nun’s past, present and future are superimposed in the moment of her investiture ceremony, stripping back the events that lead to this life-changing transformation. II. A Party (music by Thomas Smetryns): A comedy of manners patched together from vinyl recordings of 1950s English language lessons, this plunderphonic fantasy conjures up an absurdist cocktail party that gradually descends into mayhem. III. The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered (music by Christopher Mayo): Through a mosaic of tessellating narratives, the events surrounding the mysterious disappearance of an architectural photographer are reconstructed. All three composers employ pre-recorded speech within the electronic elements that accompany the singers. These fragments of speech are used variously as narrative frames, artefacts, live manipulated instruments, scores, sonic textures, metacommentary and aural supertitles. In combination with live singers, movement and video, this ‘found’ speech is central to the new approach that each piece takes to creating narrative in music theatre, and to the deconstruction of the ‘operatic’ synthesis of linguistic, musical and visual signs. // 'Triptych' was devised as part of ERRATICA’s collaborative creation process. Using our ensemble opera company of singers trained in group improvisation and physical theatre, the piece was developed through an extended workshop process, in which composers, writers and performers explored material together. | ERRATICA | Performance | Black Box | 70 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Christian Mason, Chris Mayo, Thomas Smetryns | James Halliday | | Patrick Eakin Young | | Patrick Eakin Young | Gavin Turk | Heidi Ackerman | | | | Tim Mascall | | | 17-May-2014 | United Kingdom | London | The Print Room | 80 | ERRATICA; The Print Room | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 202 | A non tale about a woman, a woman a vagabond, a traveling singer & war | | The work is about war and the hatred of war. It speaks also about memory and traces the delicate ways in which people connect with one another. Both singers/actors and players are persent on stage. Each has his or her independent line/role, composed of a few sounds/words and long silences. Each role functions as a sort of inner monologue. Four figures move on stage while a war rages in the background: The ”vagabond” is coming from the war; the traveling singer sings anti war songs alternating with sweet lullabies to an invisible audience; the ”woman in the middle” moves around a table as she folds clothes, preparing a meal and humming to herself, waiting. The vagabond passes her way and a very delicate almost nonverbal bond begins to grow between them during three mostly silent encounters. The “Woman on the Side” is sitting by a table, singing to herself—as if in a dream— fragments from Monteverdi’s “Lamento dela Ninfa” interwoven with passages describing a woman moving about her empty rooms. In the background a voice of a man is heard reading a war diary. Parts of Zohar Eitan’s poem “Back Then” appear throughout the whole work. The opera begins with the poem’s opening words: “Back then, the people could watch the sunrise without narrowing their eyes, without blinking and with no sun glasses….” | Kiki Keren-Huss (The Musica Nova Ensemble) | Opera | Black Box | 53 | Hebrew | | 0 | 1-10 | Kiki Keren Huss | | | Kiki Keren Huss | | Kiki Keren Huss | Kiki Keren Huss | | | | | Uri Rubinstein | Yogen Freilichman | | 23-Oct-2012 | Israel | | | 100 | Kiki Keren-Huss, The Musica Nova Ensemble | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 203 | What Nature Says | | Can you sound like a cricket or waterdrop? In WNS party tricks are upgraded to a stunning composition with an ecological bent. What Nature Says is without genre, and yet encompasses many a register: music theatre, performance, radiophonic art, opera and choreography. Its originality stems from director Myriam Van Imschoot's passion for the voice as a unique medium that both is deeply human ànd has the possibility to sound like anything but human. Imitation and mimicry: the desire 'to sound like' is the core of WNS. 5 performers from various backgrounds voice the murmur of the world. They evoke, in the tradition of foley artists (using only the voice), animals, machines, rivers, winds, etc. An 'a cappella' where nature provides the songbook. But what is nature? Like children, shamans and magicians who imitate other entities, they build and redefine relationships to their shifting environments. The musical score is based on transcribed field recordings, including noise pollution and the clamor of deforestation. Surprisingly, this vocalized mapping of our fragile ecosystem renders a 'tuned' cacophony that slips more than once into abstraction beyond recognition or into more symphonic registers, with maestro performers that hum, hurl, hiss, grunt and call out like nothing like it. WNS is about voicing the other, but also about listening other-wise. The audience is divided into two groups. The one group goes to the performance room to see & hear the performers execute the score (35 min); the other group listens in a dark listening room to the same performance while it is channeled live through microphones and a sound cable into a surround set-up of speakers. After the break, the audience groups switch rooms, and the performers execute the score again. Soon the audience realizes how hugely the perceptive conditions (seeing/hearing) impact experience. This doubling 'set-up' adds to the wit, the conceptual & perceptual force and spell of WNS. In the performance room the audiovisual reigns in the presence of the performers, who with a cunning physical performativity engage their whole body in a grotesque dance. In the listening room, the auditive reigns; sound is autonomous from the sound production by gesturing bodies and proposes other avenues for the trip through soundscapes. Essaywriter Laermans: "Noise policy is on the agenda for a while, but WNS shows that a negative attitude is not the best solsolution for a more inclusive politics of sound." | Myriam Van Imschoot | Performance | Black Box | 80 | No language | | 0 | 1-10 | Myriam Van Imschoot | | | | | Myriam Van Imschoot | | | | | | Geni Diez | Fabrice Moinet | | 12-Jan-2015 | Belgium | Brussels | Kaaitheater | 100 | Hiros; Kaaitheater, Brussels, Kunstencentrum Buda, Kortrijk, Kunstenwerkplaats Pianofabriek, Brussels | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 204 | Das Gräsertheater (Theatre of Grass and Herbs) | | In the heart of the Turley Barracks, built for the German Emperor in 1900,
we create a huge common-garden with citizens from Mannheim.
At the End of June this garden will become the stage design for the Theatre
of Herbs and Plants and the plants become the actors.
Additionally there will be free workshops and lectures in June. // GARDENING:
The common garden will be raised in palettized high-beds, so the garden is mobile. In the case of building measures the garden can be moved by a pallet transporter and will be preserved.
We wish to create an urban gardening-community through this project, which is interested in stustaining the garden. After the artistic part of Theatre of Herbs and Plants ends, we will give the garden to this community. We invite citizens of Mannheim not only to garden with us but as well to participate in the performance. // PERFORMACE WITH NEW MUSIC
: The dates of the performances: 25.-28. June at 8 pm and 29. June at 12 noon in the garden.
The garden on the former parade-ground of the Turley Barracks becomes the stage for a scenical concert of New Music, combined with land-art and material-theatre to reflect the complex relationship between human beings and nature. // The Theatre of Herbs and Plants is, after „A long way away“ January 2012, Ultraschall Festival Berlin) and „The Casino “ September 2012, schwindelfrei-Festival Mannheim) the third colaboration between composer Sarah Nemtsov and stage director Anna Peschke.
For this project there are compositions for classical instruments such as flutes, harp or clarinet, but as well for branch-percussions, creaky reed, grapevine-snail-chimes and seed-oceandrums. The plants will be „animated“, that means, we will give them „animus“ – soul and life, by moving them. How can plants perform? How can a story be told by herbs? Can we understand stories told by a garden? Maybe we can understand because we are part of nature. Do you remember? | Anna Peschke (Sarah Nemtsov, Ensemble Adapter) | Performance | Site Specific | 60 | No language | | 0 | 11-20 | Sarah Nemtsov | | | | | Anna Peschke | | | Uwe Lehr | | | | | | 25-Jun-2014 | Germany | Mannheim | Turley Areal, ehemaliger Exerzierplatz | 60 | Anna Peschke | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 205 | Aside | | The duo Aside create contemporary music theatre, developing performances and compositions which are tailor made for each performance space, programme and audience. Aside examines, deconstructs and challenges the expectations of each specific audience found in each venue. The basis for Aside is the concert stage in all its forms. They draw their material from that which is unintended, private, uncontrolled, uncomfortable and attempts to be hidden. Aside enlarges and transforms this material. Alongside purely musical material this is an essential element of Aside. Aside thereby blurs the boundaries between performance and composition, between sophistication and diversion. They work within the space that can open between what is intended and the outcome, between expectation, disappointment and fulfillment. Whilst performance on stage is the basis, this is to be understood as a metaphor for personal performance in general, raising questions such as: what kind of image, abilities or perfection is expected and what happens when the intended image of success, calm professionality and coolness begins to crumble? In the Mojo Club for the 150% Made in Hamburg Theaterfest 2014, Aside created a performance specifically for this space, event and public. They played with the expectations of the audience and the rituals and unwritten rules of performance. By revealing the inner life of the performer, peeling back the perfect facade, the performance celebrates the reality behind the mystique. Mojo's hip image demanded a high gloss, multimedia extravaganza. This polished display created a set of expectations in the audience which Aside could begin to dismantle. Technical failure, fear, pretension and personal conflicts come to the surface revealing what bubbles under the calm surface of performance. The performers battle with their private fears, the gap between the image they have of themselves and that which they present to the audience, they clash with each other and lose their way in the labyrinth of artistic jargon. By taking performance itself as the subject matter Aside highlights that which (when all goes well) usually remains unconsidered and hidden. By forcing this confrontation with sometimes uncomfortable reality it provides an opportunity to reconsider expectations and the traditions that support them. It highlights the falsity of performance and attempts to reveal a more open picture. A picture which could offer a bridge between the performer and aud. | Aside, Meriel Price (150% Made in Hamburg) | Performance | Black Box | 35 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Meriel Price | | | Meriel Price, Johann-Michael Schneider | | | | | | | | | | | 5-Apr-2014 | Germany | Hamburg | Mojo Club | 800 | 150% Made in Hamburg Theaterfest; KKWV of the UdK Berlin, KLANGZEITORT, Institute for new music of the UdK and HfM Hanns Eisler, Berlin | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 206 | PROTOKOLS ∣ Techno Opera | | The techno opera PROTOKOLS explores cultural paradoxes by using the computer to re-invent ancient spirituality while constantly being under the influence of our hectic, globalised culture. The Opera's aesthetic was built upon the traditions of musical instrument development (technology through the ages), and pushes this forward through adding uncanny digital manipulation. Through sampling and collaboration with classical instrumentalists, unorthodox combinations of sound textures and musical traditions are shaped into mystic avant-garde sound worlds. The mise-en-scène reaches high-intensity levels through a live LED lights/visuals setup that is selfengineered (metal constructions) and programmed to interact with the musicians, venue and audience. The Protokols opera is based on Von Nohrfeldt’s identically titled album, with its mystic sounding foundation lying in the juxtaposition of mystic minimalism (inspired by Morton Feldman, Giacinto Scelsi, Gyorgi Ligeti, Japanese Noh, etc.) and experimental techno (inspired by Murcof, Autechre, Ryoji Ikeda, etc.). Protokols regularly superimposes this dark and heavy drive with the fragile beauty of early classical solos (inspired by Händel, Ganassi, Dowland, etc.). The compositions are (classically) dynamic, often building up from almost complete silence. The sound is highly detailed and cover the complete spectrum of human audible sound, including extremely high glitches and the lowest possible sub bass. Von Nohrfeldt is the classical-electronic alter ego of Amsterdam based composer and sound designer Rutger Muller (MA Music Technology, Utrecht School of the Arts, 2012). All the artists performing in the opera found each other through their shared love for improvisation, cross-cultural sound, and deep listening environments. Kim-José Bode is a music theater director, recorder player and singer, Wen Chin Fu plays cello and her self-designed wearable instruments, Rutger Muller used the computer for digital sound processing, and Naïvi created live visuals based on custom-built LED lighting. With this team, PROTOKOLS has been performed twice in 2014, in the concert hall of Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ supporting Robert Henke, and at the Prins27 theatre during Rewire Festival. The classical and theatrical settings of these concerts proved to convey the atmosphere of Protokols optimally. | Rutger Muller | Performance | Black Box | 60 | | | 0 | 1-10 | Rutger Muller | | | | | | Kim-José Bode | | | | Coen Klösters | | | Wen Chin Fu (Instrument designer), Rutger Muller (Web designer), Kevin Quaid (LED Panel, Props designer) | 11-Jul-2014 | Netherlands | Amsterdam | Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ | 123 | Stichting aXolot Synergy | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 207 | Buenos Aires | | Buenos Aires is a music theatre work in which the composer addresses the absurdity of opera singing. Within a science fiction setting, it deals with indirectness, resistance, dictatorship, censorship, with clichés and pop culture – and with air, in the truest sense of the word. It is Simon Steen-Andersons first music theatre work, shaped by numerous of his own experiences, observations, interests and personal statements – not least on the music theatre genre itself. The score is a script with stage directions and performance notes for the musicians scattered in. The libretto is the composer’s own and, aside from some original dialogues, consists primarily of quotations and collages. In the 1st scene, the composer presents – in the manner of an overture – everything that is important to him in this work. The 2nd scene is a collage of dialogues from various episodes of the 1980s courtroom soap L.A. Law, while the text for the 5th scene comprises quotations from lectures and travel guides about Argentina. The stage set consists of 3 video screens either showing live video from small hand cameras with wireless video transmitters or pictures from various places and rooms. There is a high level of interaction with the stage scene, where fans, toy instruments, an air compressor, speaking aids and much more form the atypical inventory of this music theatre work play an important musical and scenic role. The main figure, Johanna, first appears as herself in a recording studio and is increasingly controlled by others, until she experiences dependence in a violent manner in the 2nd scene. In the 3rd, she has a relationship at eye level (in the truest sense of the word), while in the 4th she exerts pressure on others, until she is finally deprived of control once more, and has a purely observing role in the 5th scene. For her counterpart Anzorena, it is the other way around: in the 1st scene he takes over the authority of interpretation for the piece. In the 2nd too, though only indirectly present, he still exerts control. In the 4th scene he appears in a minor role in a changed state and in the 5th scene he becomes the protagonist once more, a figure on which to project Argentine suffering and longings. The three other singers/actors become instruments of the composer with overwrought and increasingly complex interpretative demands, passing through all expressive nuances from joyful execution of the instructions, then subtle subversion, to open rebellion. | Musik der Jahrhunderte/Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart (Simon Steen-Andersen, Ensemble Asamisimasa) | Performance | Black Box | 70 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Simon Steen-Andersen | | | Simon Steen-Andersen | | Simon Steen-Andersen | Peter Tinning | Andrea Bernd | | | | | Matthias Schneider | | 18-Sep-2014 | Norway | Oslo | Utima Festival | 500 | Musik der Jahrhunderte; Ultima Festival Oslo, Ensemble Asamisimasa | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Vokalartisten |
| 208 | Der letzte Ritter oder liebt Europa! (The last one of the knights or love Europe!) | | Mister Bratfisch, who has been working as a restaurator of the Viennese Kaisergruft for centuries, is commited in taking care of the tombs of the great Austrian Emporers. In the absence of Mister Bratfisch the spirits of the great Habsburgs appeare and wallaw in memories of their great times. Meanwhile they ruthlessly comment on present (political) conditions and philosophize on a joint Europe. A special surprise is brought to the group of ghosts by the appearce of Emperor Maxilian I. spirit, who is shocked to realize that he has been transferred to the burial place of the Habsburgs in Vienna, instead of the originally planned tomb in Bruges, where his great love, Mary of Burgundy was burried. How can he get away? In any case, this seems to be a very difficult task to manage, especially since the Kaisergruft is threatened by consummation on account of cost cuts. | Theaterfestival Steudltenn (Hakon Hirzenberger) | Opera | Black Box | 90 | German | | 0 | 11-20 | Hakon und die Jungfrauen, Moritz Hierländer | | | | | Hakon Hirzenberger | Gerhard Kainzner | | | | | Sabine Wiesenbauer | | | 14-May-2014 | Austria | Uderns | Steudltenn | 150 | Theaterfestival Steudltenn/Uderns; Theaterfestival Steudltenn/ Uderns | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 209 | Behaviour Patterns | | Behaviour Patterns is a musical theatre strongly inspired by ethology, thus exploring the relationship between humans’ and animals’ behaviour and language. 4 movements that can be interpreted separately constitute the work, which are altogether coherent by the parallel being shown between animal and human communication involving sound. Each movement focuses in a precise subject, though unity is found by the systematic utilisation of music (occidental and extra-occidental), spoken language and animal sounds. // 1."Darwin Innamorato": for 2 singers – 11 min. A love duet quoting birds’ and mammals’ love parade sounds, as well as Inuit Throat Singing and a duo d’amore from Verdi’s La Traviata. These different elements are displayed at a same level so as to abolish cultural hierarchy among ritual sounds created to accomplish the reproduction act. The score demands a detailed placement of singers depending on what acoustic situation is to be recalled, // 2."Travelling": for men choir (from 30 to 84 singers, depending on local possibilities, a mix of amateur and professional is possible) -20 min (score sketches attached to the application) A constantly evolving portrait of different soundscapes quoting - among many others - rain, frogs, Balinese Monkey chant, anthems, stock markets. The choir is not to be seen by spectators and sounds are constantly moving across the choir so as to create the “Travelling” cinema effect, but also to increase synaesthetic impression of sounds produced. // 3. "The Wall": for men choir divided in 2 groups – 5 min. Each group is on one side of the hall, at the audience’s space. A racist insult battle takes place, the spectators being in-between. The two choirs gradually shift to a massive unison bark. // 4. "Médiums, Média": for Ondes Martenot, voice, tape & 2 performers - 20 min. The interpreter plays, sings, speaks, screams and controls the amplification of the sounds coming from her body (throat, heart, intestines). In a television channel-surfing fashion she quotes Sufi chants, an Afro-American gospel speech, erotic sounds and a soccer television commentator. // The 2 performers are inside the audience’s space to create a ritual device including two kinds of actions: 1: spreading scents (incense, perfumes, etc) 2: distribute to the spectators various objects related to domination of human being over animals (identification rings, feeding products etc.) The tape diffuses blood flux sounds, previously recorded by an Ecograph Doppler. | Alvaro Martinez Leon | Performance | Black Box | 56 | Various | | 0 | > 20 | Alvaro Martinez Leon | | Alvaro Martinez Leon | | | | | | | | | | | | 4-Apr-2015 | France | Angers | Sound art festival FORMA | 150 | Sound art festival FORMA (Angers, France) | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 210 | Sommertag | | Spacial Chamber Music Theatre: "A Summer's Day", based on Jon Fosse's play by the same title and adapted by the composer, set out to establish a new form of music theatre, where language, music, and imagery unite to reveal the unspoken. Working in close dialogue with one another, the team surrounding the composer Nikolaus Brass, Waltraud Lehner (dramaturge), Christian Marten-Molnár (director) and Katherina Kopp (set design) collaborated with selected instrumentalists from Munich's music scene and Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart to transport Fosse's universe of words to the musical and visual realm, creating a spatial music theatre that would make the invisible audible and the inaudible visible. // Composition Technique: In order to achieve an authentic musical contextualization of the characters' internal reality and agency, the composition process needed to integrate the inner spaces of ist performers. Consequently, most of the composition is based on the principle of "selforganising music", a concept further refined by the composer. In it the soloists work with a written template, which they then interpret and perform in a predefined time frame, but always spontaneously influenced by every moment's interaction. Large parts of the piece have no fully written score, instead the vocal and instrumental parts are noted in individual parts, predominantly in proportional notation. This means there is no exact common tempo and every performer acts in their own "inherent" tempo. The interplay, the musical and textual "spine", is not fixed in an absolute way, but is being created subjectively and relatively to one another. There is therefore no need for a conductor, a fact that fundamentally influenced the rehearsal process and led to a very special performance character. // Synopsis: "A Summer's Day" tells the story of a young woman waiting in vain for her husband, who has gone to sea by himself on an autum day – he never returns. The story is told as a flashback when the woman, now older, receives a visit by a friend – on a summer's day – and remembers the day her husband disappeared. The past suddenly comes to life and the woman comes face to face with her younger self. She relives the pain of the speechlessness between her and her husband Asle, she witnesses her own helplessness and fear, and she understands the nature of her relationship with her friend and her friend's husband, who appears to be like a puppet master, playing a sinister game... | Nikolaus Brass, Christian Marten-Molnár, Katherina Kopp | Opera | Black Box | 94 | German | | 0 | 11-20 | Nikolaus Brass | | | Nikolaus Brass | Jon Fosse | Christian Marten-Molnár | Katherina Kopp | Katherina Kopp | Waltraud Lehner | | Georg Lendorff | Barbara Westernach | | | 5-Dec-2014 | Germany | Berlin | Radialsystem V | 150 | Sommertag GbR, 2eleven contemporary music projects | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Vokalartisten, Butoh |
| 211 | Traces | | „Traces“ is a chamber opera written by Ylva Lund Bergner (www.ylvalundbergner.com). The piece is inspired by the novel ’The trail of your blood in the snow’ by Gabriel García Márquez. // Story: A man and a woman, Nina & Will, are in an intimate relationship that is under change. Nina is experiencing pain while Will is getting more and more distant. They don’t connect anymore and he ends up alone. // This video recording is a dress rehearsal from the workshop in Darmstadt (Summer Course) in August 2014. Since this was a workshop, the coming performances can be different. The interpretation of the score is very free so this version is only one of many possible. | Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Ylva Lund Bergner) | Opera | Black Box | 18 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Ylva Lund Bergner | Stefan Schreiber | | Ylva Lund Bergner | Gabriel García Márquez | Lydia Steier | | | Patrick Hahn | | | | | | 14-Aug-2014 | Germany | Darmstadt | | 40 | Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 212 | Breakdown | | Breakdown is an opera in three Acts for soloists, (optional) chorus and orchestra. Four performance artists share the stage but are distinct in time and space. Marina Abramovic performing her piece 'Rhythm 0' has placed 72 objects on a table including knives, whips, a gun and a bullet. There is a sign on the table saying, "There are seventy-two objects on the table that may be used on me as desired. I am the object.” Michael Landy is destroying all his possessions in a grinder. Barry le Va is running from side to side in a gallery, banging himself off the walls in his 'Velocity Piece No. 2'. These three pieces intercut with each other in the first act. Landy's mother is against the destruction of her son's possessions and in particular, a coat that was left to him by his father. Landy has to defend himself against criticism from his own assistants and members of the public. Abramovic explains herself to an assistant and then remains completely passive as the people who attend her event start to use the objects on the table to hurt her. The act ends with a man threatening to cut her face with a blade. The second Act begins with Joseph Beuys, a fourth artist, explaining pictures to a dead hare. During this Act, Landy continues to defend himself. His mother enters and tries to retrieve the coat. Abramovic is subjected to even greater danger and Barry le Va continues to bash himself off the walls of the gallery getting more bloodied all the time. The act ends with all three pieces reaching their climax. A man puts together a gun and a bullet from the table and is stopped when he puts the loaded weapon in her mouth. Le Va collapses and Landy, naked and posessionless destroys his father's coat. The third act sees the boundaries of time and place removed and all artists and participants inhabit the same space.The artists are forced by the crowd to defend their position and their art. The Act ends with Joseph Beuys singing prayerfully that the work 'Cannot rest'. Breakdown is scored for orchestra and has 16 solo parts with a chorus that can be made up of the soloists if required. The music is designed to follow the emotion of the stories. | Dublin Institute of Technology (Andrew Synnott) | Other | Proscenium Stage | 80 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Andrew Synnott | Andrew Synnott | | John Breen | | | | | | | | | | | 20-Jan-2015 | Ireland | Dublin | National Concert Hall | 1200 | Dublin Institute of Technology, Vocal and Orchestral Departments | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 213 | The Source | | The Source is a modern-day oratorio; a patchwork of American primary-source texts from 2005-2010, culled into a libretto by Mark Doten, set to music by Ted Hearne and directed by Daniel Fish. The US military documents known as the ‘Iraq War Logs’ and ‘Afghan War Diary’ form a central part. This massive trove of classified communications, leaked from the Dept. of Defense by Pfc Chelsea Manning (then Bradley Manning), was released in 2010 by WikiLeaks and their media partners. Manning, then 22 years old and stationed in Iraq, was reported to the authorities by the famed former hacker Adrian Lamo and arrested in May 2010. Manning had sought out Lamo online, drawn by his reputation as a hacker, his public support of WikiLeaks, and possibly his sexual orientation (Manning was aware that Lamo is bisexual and worked for greater LGBT rights in the 90’s.) The two engaged in a far-ranging online chat, during which Manning spoke of the leaks, as well as her feelings about herself, her gender identity, life in the Army, US foreign policy, secrecy and her hopes that her actions would lead to “worldwide discussion, debate and reforms.” Excerpts of these chats, published later by Wired.com, form the other core portion of Mark Doten’s libretto. In August 2013, Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment. Following her sentencing, she made public her transgender status and requested the treatments necessary for her gender transition. // Four performers (two men, two women) sing the words of Manning, the War Logs, and tangential voices as required. They sit amongst the audience, who occupy the entire theater and are surrounded on all sides by four giant screens projecting video throughout. A band of seven musicians playing Hearne’s multistylistic score is stationed behind one of the screens. // The video, by Jim Findlay and Daniel Fish, is composed mostly from original footage of nearly 100 people’s faces, filmed by Fish and Findlay as they watched a very small part of what Manning exposed — an 8-minute excerpt of an airstrike by Apache helicopters in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. At the end of the piece, the same excerpt is shown to the audience. // The Source embodies a struggle to grapple with the leaks themselves: the sheer enormity of their scope (483,000 Army field reports and 251,000 diplomatic cables were released along with several videos), their vivid yet emotionless depiction of people and events in distant places, their unflinching portrait of our wars. | Ted Hearne & Mark Doten, Beth Morrison Projects | Performance | Black Box | 72 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Ted Hearne | Nathan Koci | | Mark Doten | | Daniel Fish | Jim Findlay | Terese Wadden | | | Jim Findlay, Daniel Fish | Christopher Kuhl | | | 22-Oct-2014 | USA | New York | Brookyln Academy of Music | 200 | Beth Morrison Projects; Brookyln Academy of Music | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Videokunst, Gesang |
| 214 | Dancing Windows | Music for Magic Lanterns | Dancing Windows is an audiovisual concert for magic lanterns, quotidian objects and flute. Images and music are performed live and everyday life paraphernalia is performed in combination with the flute producing ¨real time movies¨. Images are created live by a collection of magic lanterns together with simple materials as cardboards, sand, water drops and threads under the audience eyes. The “black box” of the audiovisual product is in this project totally transparent. Music is made by vintage artifacts like fans, pickups, tins and radios that are playing in synchrony with the flute. Dancing Windows is not improvisation, nor an installation. It is music written for an expanded orchestra, which brings quotidian objects into the score. Program: 1. Zand/Sand (2004) – for magic lantern equipped with mini-aquarium and flute. Three white triangles get covered with sand like a sand clock. Sand to see and sand to listen. Visuals by Ida Lohman. 2. Snaar (String), for string telephone, slide-projectors and flute. Strings tied to tins project their shadows on the walls; the white noise of the string-telephone plays in counterpoint with the flute. 3. Tekening (Drawing), for flute, chalks and mirror. A live drawing on a mirror comes to life in synchrony with the flute, conforming a real time animation. The progressive drawing is reflected as well on walls and ceiling by angling the mirror in combination with the magic lanterns. 4. Terug (Back), For tape, flute and homemade movie. This piece was written using a mirror composition technique: when the music reaches the end, it comes back to the beginning, note by note (Terug). The music score, projected by a hand-crank projector reveals the music architecture; the film plays back and forth following the notes. 5. Pentagram (Staff) for flute, big music stand and 4 slide-projectors: small fragments of written music are projected on a giant score and the space around in synchrony with the flute, conforming a live “solfège”. Four slide projectors located on different spots spreads the graphic notation under different angles making the score threedimensional: simple means, complex result. // There are short interludes in between the pieces, linking the sections without interruptions. // Total duration: ca. 45 minutes. Half program or isolated pieces are also possible. Optional: we offer an after-concert works | Cecilia Arditto | Performance | Black Box | 40 | No Language | | 0 | 1-10 | Cecilia Arditto | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 7-Dec-2013 | Argentinia | Conde, Belgrano, Buenos Aires | Centro Cultural Plaza Castelli | 50 | Stichting plan B | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 215 | BACH Yu Ram Gi (A travel to BACH) | | Bach in Germany is an icon of music history, yet he also belongs to the cultural canonof Korea. What if you have figured out that BACH is the 3rd most famous family namein Korea? What if you’ve noticed that BACH is an old-fashioned spelling of P-A-R-Knowadays in South Korea in which the word “Bach” originally means strongly brightlight?We are not only interested in dealing with him as a good-old historical person, but alsoas an international and artistic phenomenon emerging and reflecting itself in variouscontemporary places and stories of Germany and South Korea respectively.How do German and South Korean perceive Bach nowadays? In which context do theyencounter him? What does he mean to people in different cultural backgrounds?Unlike Germany, where Bach is regarded as a historical figure, he appears to be avivid part of everyday life in Korea. Freed from history, Bach is alive more concretelyand realistically in Korean descriptions of him. He is like an omnipresent spirit and abenign father figure whom you are happy to spend time with.All these different aspects of him are joined together to form a bigger picture, namelythe witty ‚proof’ that Bach is not only a famous composer and an internationalmusicological phenomenon, but above all a figure coming alive in our everyday culture.A starting point of our journey is a question about the perception of others, and a teamof Koreans and Germans goes on a quest to trace Bach in South Korea and Germany.Firstly, there is a documentary-interview part which is complemented with a fictitiousBach character. The character strolls through Gwangju, South Korea, and experiencesthe everyday fabric of Korean life, going to a hairdresser, to a dentist and taking asubway. At the second part of the journey, the character visits Leipzig, Germany, andBach-experts tell their professional ideas and perceptions of him.The audience experiences a music theatre with elements of video, dance, music andperformance, trying to approach the Bach phenomenon.Bach Yu Ram Gi is the fourth part of "Wunderopus 5", supported by the GermanFederal Cultural Foundation.The theater is a collage of four scenes that do not form a linear narration but remainindependent elements: Approaching Bach, Bach’s movement, Shamanic ritual of Bach,and Coffee of Bach. | Oper Dynamo West Berlin, LOFFT Leipzig | Performance | Site Specific, Black Box | 75 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | | Philipp Rumsch | | | | Soo-eun Lee | Judith Philipp | Judith Philipp | Ilka Rümke | Yun Jung Lee | Min-hyung Kang | | | | 26-Mar-2015 | Germany | Leipzig | LOFFT | 99 | Oper Dynamo West Berlin, LOFFT Leipzig; theaterlee in South Korea, ehrliche arbeit Berlin | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 216 | Gedankenspünge - Zu keiner Zeit betreten (At no time beeing down) | | The Dramolett of Tancred Hadwiger "Zu keiner Zeit betreten" takes place in a possiblefuture. Five characters, each with significant additudes and bad habits are headingdown in individual scenes to various (im-) possible locations and venues. They use alanguage which syntax seems to be incomprehensible. The texts are cryptic, lyrical,associative and fragmentary. The fragility and inconsistency of linguistic show howlanguage produces reality and how we sort our external perceptions to an inner reality.In addition to the relationship between music and text, video plays an important role:Live Visuals are mixed with images from television, Images of the players and singersare doubled, splittedd and dissolve in the visualization of a swarm. The lyrics are partlyspoken and partly sung.The music ranges from detailed worked out noise and sound layers, linear gradientsand subtle melody to expressive sound outbreaks. The musical ensemble consists ofclassical instruments such as flute, clarinet, cello, double bass, percussion andelectroacoustic as electric guitar, keyboard and live electronics.The master project of Raimund Vogtenhuber (composition student at the ZHdK) isdeveloped in cooperation with the department of music and theater. | Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (Raimund Vogtenhuber) | Performance | Black Box | 50 | German | | 0 | 11-20 | Raimund Vogtenhuber | | | Tancred Hadwiger | | Christopher Kriese | | | Fabio Dietsche | | Ivo Schüssler | | | Raimund Vogtenhuber (Concept) | 15-Nov-2012 | Switzerland | Zürich | Gessnerallee, Bühne A | 60 | Zürcher Hochschule der Künste | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 217 | DsHsdrKrnkhtn | A literary and documentary musical theatre | A literary and documentary musical theatre for soprano, mezzo-soprano, piano, doublebass, electronics, and video projection. Libretto compiled from Unica Zürn: Das Hausder Krankheiten (1958, first print Berlin 1986, German) and Final Report. President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, March 1995 (Pittsburgh, U.S.Government Printing Office, 1995, English).The visions and medical practice described by Zürn in her fictional text (only two yearslater, in 1960, she was first isolated in a psychiatric clinic) evoke surprisingassociations with actual methods of mind control and behavior manipulation whichhave been developed for American secret services with the help of former Nazidoctors, and admittedly used at least until the late 1970s and most probably to this day.Zürnʼ s fictitious text is being confronted with excerpts from two testimonies before thePresidentʼ s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, March 1995, whichrevealed most cruel practice by psychiatrists employed by the CIA, in a program toproduce the unwitting, perfect spy assassin.The composed sung and spoken text levels are interweaved with a musical setting ofimprovised instrumental music, playback consisting of processed instrumental material,and video projection of Unica Zürn's drawings from "Das Haus der Krankheiten",alternating with other visuals.The musically most challenging aspect is the specific combination of composition andimprovisation. Composed recitatives and arias are accompanied by improvising instrumentalists | Dietrich Eichmann, Astrid Weins | Performance | Black Box | 62 | German, English | | 0 | 1-10 | Dietrich Eichmann | | | | Unica Zürn | | Sabine Schall | | | | Sabine Schall | | Nicolas Wiese | Dietrich Eichmann, Astrid Weins (Concept) | 12-Jan-2014 | Germany | Berlin | Theaterforum Kreuzberg | 99 | Oaksmus GbR; Garagenoper Kollektiv, Theaterforum Kreuzberg | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 218 | Tusen och en natt (Arabian Nights) | | Arabian Nights is a show for the whole family, set in a shimmering fairytale world with amyriad of colorful people and adventures.Commissioned by Operaverkstan, Malmo Opera, with music by Daniel Fjellström andlyrics by Vanja Hamidi Isacson Arabian Nights is a performance on Malmo Opera’smain stage with soloists, many children and young people, a banda orchestra playingon middle eastern instruments together with Malmo Opera Orchestra.Arabian Nights is about Sjeherazade who night after night tell tales to the gloomySultan Sjahriar to save her life. Each dawn she stops to tell when it's most exciting. TheSultan can not do other than to let her live, just one more night, to hear the end of thesaga. As soon as a story is finished, she finds immediately a new, even more stunningand amazing. Slowly awakened is the curiosity and the desire to listen to the sultan andhe is filled with the desire to know what happens next. Sjeherazade renders him thecolors, imagination and joy of life, and after a thousand and one nights sultan Sjahriarsurrenders. He sets Sjeherazade free and declares his love for her.Arabian Nights is a tapestry of stories and contains besides Sjeherazades own storyincluding that of the Genie in the bottle and the story about the Fairy Paribanu.. | Malmo Opera, Operaverkstan (Daniel Fjellström) | Opera | Black Box | 70 | Swedish | | 0 | > 20 | Daniel Fjellström | Niclas Willén | | Vanja Hamidi Isacson | | Maria Sundqvist | Eva Sommestad Holten | Leif Persson | | Ola Hörling | | Karl Svensson | Peter Dahlström | | 28-Dec-2013 | Sweden | Malmo | Malmo Opera | 1511 | Operaverkstan, Malmo Opera; Nya Latin Dansgymnasium, Drömmarnas Hus | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 219 | Niet Drummen (Beat the drum) | Visual concert | Marbles, balls, bowls, drumheads, drums and water… A magical journey in a peculiarsetting. A light source artist, a flute and sax player and a percussionist embark on adiscovery mission of sound, music and rhythms. Young and old, big and small enjoy avisual concert. Rock ‘n’ Roll meets Poetry. Ro audience (the very young ones together with their adult caregivers) will be invitedto move around and discover the set, which holds a lot of fascinating sound bearingsurprises and light creations. This open structure and the associative ways the differentimages are presented open up the spectator’s minds (being very young or older) letthem enjoy not obvious rhythms and sounds of Persian percussion instruments, flute,sax and other elements within the setting. | Theater De Spiegel | Instrumental Theatre | Black Box, Moving Audience | 35 | No language | | 8 | 1-10 | Nicolas Ankouninoff, Joeri Wens | | | | | Karel Van Ransbeeck | Wim Van de Vyver | | | | | Alain Ongenaet | | | 16-Dec-2014 | Belgium | Antwerp | Theater De Spiegel | 80 | Theater De Spiegel; Association Nova Villa/ Méli Môme, Reims | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Instrumentales Theater, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 220 | Arrival Cities: Hanoi | | Arrival Cities: Hanoi is a piece of music theatre with documentary film. It seeks a new format for politically informed theatre which is responsive to the challenges of a globalized society. Arrival Cities: Hanoi weaves many individual stories together in an exploration of the dissolution of the relationship with tradition that urbanization brings. The form of the piece draws on the long-term development of artistic method for music theatre, carried out by Teatr Weimar, building on the aesthetics of the hörspiel. Hence, the music, written by the Swedish composer Kent Olofsson, in collaboration with the Vietnamese/Swedish group The Six Tones, is central to the narrative. The Canadian journalist Doug Saunders discusses 21st century migration in his book titled “Arrival Cities” (2010). Building on research on five continents, his book chronicles the final shift of human populations from rural to urban areas, which Saunders argues is the most important development of the 21st-century. He argues that this migration creates "arrival cities," neighbourhoods and slums on the urban margins that are linked both to villages and to core cities, and that the fate of these centres is crucial to the fortunes of nations. Arrival Cities: Hanoi builds a narrative from the life story of Luu Ngoc Nam, an actor and costume maker in traditional Tuồng theatre. His travels in the country, the homesickness and the tension between traditions that he experiences becomes the source for a further exploration of hand gesture in Tuồng theatre and an expansive portrait of a city vibrant of memories from the Vietnamese countryside. In May and June of 2014 The Six Tones worked with the Swedish director Jörgen Dahlqvist in Hanoi, making documentary recordings and interviews with people in migration zones in the city. Their stories are all very different, one woman works as a street vendor to pay for her two children’s studies in university in Hanoi. Even if she will never become a Hanoian, her children will surely have the option. While collecting the documentary material, we realised how the performer’s own stories of migration to and from Hanoi had to be part of the piece. In this way, the piece exposes many personal and deeply felt stories and experiences of the fragility that comes with being in a state of migration. The political nature of the piece emerges from the presence of the three musicians of the group on stage as individuals rather than as musicians or actors. | "Teatr Weimar" Malmo (The Six Tones) | Performance | Black Box | 70 | Vietnamese | English | 0 | 1-10 | Kent Olofsson | | | | | Jörgen Dahlqvist | Marcus Råberg | | | Miguel Cortes | The Six Tones | | | | 21-Nov-2014 | Sweden | Malmo | Inter Arts Center | 50 | Teatr Weimar Malmo, Ars Nova | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 221 | Crossing | | Inspired by the diary Walt Whitman kept as a nurse during the Civil War, this world premiere opera by the extraordinary young composer Matthew Aucoin explores how the individual experiences of soldiers are remembered and told. As Whitman listens to wounded veterans share their memories and messages, he forges a bond with a soldier who forces him to examine his own role as writer and poet. This new opera, featuring the Boston-based orchestra A Far Cry, an ensemble at the forefront of a dynamic new generation in classical music was produced in association with Music- Theatre Group. | American Repertory Theater | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 100 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Matthew Aucoin | Matthew Aucoin | | Matthew Aucoin | Walt Whitman | Diane Paulus | Tom Pye | David Zinn | | Jill Johnson | Finn Ross | Jennifer Tipton | | | 29-May-2015 | USA | Boston | Citi Performing Arts Centre | 1460 | American Repertory Theater, Music-Theatre Group | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 222 | Os Sinos da Macieira (The Bells of the Apple Tree) | | The idea of creating a story with the feel of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale but with a modern message began when friend and musician Richard Tomes (who later produced the film of the debut performance) told us about some of his favourite childhood memories, stories and films, in particular the 1957 DEFA television production called 'The Singing Ringing Tree'. The production was marketed to both western and eastern Europe TV companies, dubbed into many languages and shown widely throughout Europe during the 1960s and 70s. This early children's TV viewing was a recycling of the eternal fairy tale tradition into a (then) modern TV serialisation. The rather odd, old fashioned, even amateurish treatment is still remembered fondly today by millions all over Europe who were children at the time. In retrospect it's now clear that having left an indelible mark in the imaginations of so many, this production was far more successful than anyone at the time could have thought possible. We began to think of creating an original children's opera, using an old fashioned formula modernised stylistically in which the spiritual, sophisticated and subtle meet elements of pop culture, as well as the magic and even “naivety” of a good old fashioned fairy tale. Over the next two years, which through personal circumstances were very sad ones for us, we worked on this opera, and it has been a source of hope and lightness, so our eternal gratitude for the inspiration, wherever it comes from. We showed the opera to David Wyn Lloyd, conductor of the Orquestra Classica do Centro, the classical orchestra of the city of Coimbra, Portugal. He suggested that we attempt to stage the debut performance at the 5th Arts Festival at 'Quinta das Lágrimas' an open air garden venue in Coimbra, in the summer of 2013. To our delight the forces of synchronicity were with us, the theme of the festival happened to be Nature and a firm by the name of 'Águas de Coimbra' (The Coimbra Water Company) partially funded the performance which took place on Saturday July 18, 2013. Our interpreters were Portuguese vocal soloists Ana Barros (soprano), Mário João Alves (tenor), Margarida Reis (mezzo) and Pedro Teles (baritone), the Chamber Choir of S. João da Madeira and the Orquestra Clássica do Centro, conducted by David Wyn Lloyd. | Orquestra Clássica do Centro Coimbra | Other | Site Specific | 60 | Portugese | | 0 | > 20 | Marina Pikoul, Natalia Pikoul | David Lloyd | | | | Richard Tomes | Richard Tomes | | | | | | | | 18-Jul-2013 | Portugal | Coimbra | Quinta das Lágrimas | 500 | Orquestra Clássica do Centro, Coimbra | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Gesang |
| 223 | The Call | | THE CALL is a surrealistic piece exploring the depths of personal contact, loneliness, and 'noise' in our communications through a timeless and non-linear narrative based on still-life images inspired by photos of Guy Bourdin and Cindy Sherman. It is the first large production of DTMF Signaling, a new multidisciplinary group based in Amsterdam. In THE CALL, each discipline is engaging organically to create different layers of meaning within the dramaturgy of the piece. Our aesthetic doesn’t rely on text-based meaning, but rather gives importance to the embodied experience of the audience. // Music: Rotary telephones were hacked so that audio voltage can make the telephones ring. Also, the telephones' original speaker and microphone are used to create and transmit sound. Composed elements like singing, speech, sound of props (like static from a 70's t.v.) and the sound inherent to the action, create a live soundscape. The composition is a translation of magical realism into music, where a seemingly 'realistic' scene gradually morphs into a surreal atmosphere were sounds co-relate to each other in a way they would rarely, if never, do in real life. // Choreography/ Scenography: Cinthya plays with iconographic images and physical actions from our cultures: a woman talking on the phone, watching T.V. or just sitting on a sofa. These symbols create a frame where the complexity of the characters is expressed by the abstract quality of movement and music, which communicates with the audience beyond rationality. // The scenography creates images which influence the choreographic language. Props trigger movement and physical actions, giving everyday life situations a deeper meaning. The most important props are the rotary telephones, which are used by the main character to talk to herself, while the witnesses use them to create channels of communication that sometimes distort reality. // Light Design: Vinny’s work can be distinguished by its use of light to tell a story, giving light a formative role in the performance process and space, rather than just a decorative one. She makes images through a conversation between light, music and movement. The light design guides the audience through the non-linear narrative, using a strong colour palette inspired by the Surrealists and atmospheric changing shadows to indicate the passing of time. Household floor lamps are used for the audience light, creating an immediate and atmospheric connection between the audience and the piece. | Felipe Ignacio Noriega | Performance | Black Box | 50 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Felipe Ignacio Noriega | | | | | Cinthya Oyervides | | | Cinthya Oyervides! | Cinthya Oyervides! | | Vinny Jones | | | 10-Sep-2014 | Netherlands | Amsterdam | Frascati Theater | 42 | DTMF Signaling | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 224 | Solaris | | Dai Fujikura’s first opera Solaris, co-commissioned by Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Opéra de Lille, Opéra de Lausanne, Ircam-Centre Pompidou and Ensemble Intercontemporain, had its world premiere in Paris on March 5th. The production was directed by Saburo Teshigawara who also wrote the libretto after Stanisław Lem’s famous novel. The multimedia production includes dance, live electronic and videos in 3D. Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris is about a scientist who is sent to a space station built on an ocean plant. The ocean mysteriously affects the behavior of the station crew, who are confronted with physical manifestations of their dreams, desires and prior experiences which are created by the sentient ocean on Solaris. In Fujikura opera, the ocean will be realized by electro acoustics and this sound world will be the seed for physical expression on stage. Solaris is no science-fiction opera, it is an exploration of the emotional flow of the novel realized by a composer and choreographer using a small cast of five solo singers. By creating Solaris in this way, by using their physical and musical responses to create a dramaturgy and then libretto they seek to create an emotional translation of Lem’s work that can unlock many personal inner worlds. | Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Opéra de Lille, Opéra de Lausanne, Ircam-Centre Pompidou, Ensemble Intercontemporain (Dai Fujikura) | Oper | Black Box | 90 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Dai Fujikura | Erik Nielsen | | Saburo Teshigawara | | Julie Serre | Saburo Teshigawara | Saburo Teshigawara | | Saburo Teshigawara | | | | | 5-Mar-2015 | France | Paris | Théâtre des Champs-Élysées | 1900 | Théâtre des Champs-Élysées; Opéra de Lille, Opéra de Lausanne, Ircam-Centre Pompidou, Ensemble Intercontemporain | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Tanztheater |
| 225 | (k)eine Alpensage ((no) legend of the Alps) | | The project was developed for a special series of the Jeunesse Austria „Musik zum Angreifen“ - that invites all Viennese children (age 6 -8 years) to the Konzerthaus Vienna. Since there is no possibility at all to use theatrical material, we decided to hand over the story to the inner eye of the spectator and base it on a musical narration. In a second step, when the project started touring, light design was added. Music and text play with the typical sounds, structures and legends of the Alps and quote traditional folk music in a contemporary way. The strong musical atmospheres allow an extremely reduced staging. Like a story teller, the singer gives a lot of space for own imagination and does not illustrate the story. The set design supports the minimalistic staging by putting the singing narrator in the center, based on an old traditional sledge. The young audience sits around the center in four different sections. The instruments have the possibility to be part of the story, or to let the sound circle around the audience. Soundscapes and arias tell a story about curiosity, mystical legends as well as about the strength and importance of nature. The protagonist Annie grew up in the mountains where her grandmother sang the song of Perchta to her. The legends tell that the Perchta wanders around in special night’s with the lost children, but no one has ever seen them. The legendary figure of „Frau Perchta“ has many names in Europe like: Freya, Frau Holle, Frigga, Dana… Intrigued by the legend little Annie wants to find out more about the existence of the ‚lost children‘. On her search she encounters many other creatures, that are strongly characterized by the music. The children are involved in the composition with noise makers. Every group has a moment in the story, where they support the musical atmosphere. Soundscapes of wind, water, hailstorm and stones as elements of the mountains are used for these moments of participation. | Jeunesse Musikalische Jugend Österreich, Philharmonie Luxemburg | Instrumental Theatre | Black Box, Audience Participation | 45 | German | | 6 | 1-10 | Christoph Dienz | | | Ela Baumann | | Ela Baumann | Agnes Hasun | Agnes Hasun | | | | | | | 31-Mar-2014 | Austria | Vienna | | 100 | Jeunesse Musikalische Jugend Austria; Philharmonie Luxemburg | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 226 | Troparion | | Troparion is a chamber opera written for alto Helena Rasker and violinist Liza Ferschtman. The approx. 45 minutes long piece was commissioned by the Delft Chamber Music Festival and the Holland Festival. The first performance of Troparion took place on June 18th 2013 at the Muziekgebouw aan het IJ in Amsterdam, staged by Pierre Audi, in a double bill with opera Suster Bertken. A woman sheds her tears upon a dead branch and sprinkles it with holy water while praying incessantly, in the hope that God will breathe new life into it. It was the theatrical power of this image what made me decide to compose Troparion, which means ‘an oft-repeated verse’. The Egyptian desert around Sketis forms the setting of Troparion. Around the year 400 A.D., countless hermits and ascetics gathered in this barren and desolate region. They went on a search for integrity and authenticity, driven by a longing for unification with God. The libretto of Troparion is largely derived from the ‘Apophthegmata Patrum’ (‘Sayings of the Desert Fathers’) and is sung in classical Greek, its original language. The music of Troparion consists of three movements, which together last about 45 minutes, and is written for a small ensemble. The first movement bears a highly ritualistic character and is built up almost entirely out of weeping on the branch, murmuring of a troparion, and singing of prayers. The second part relates of a journey deep into the desert in which the woman encounters two naked men amongst the drinking animals at an oasis. They explain to her how to become a monk and ascetic. In the final movement a miracle occurs and the branch buds and bears the most delicious fruit, after which the music returns to the serenity of the beginning. The central character in Troparion is anonymous, in accordance both with the nature of the desert as well as that of the ascetic, bearing in mind also the seventies-ballad ‘I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name’. | Holland Festival, Delft Chamber Music Festival, November Music (Robert Zuidam, Asko∣Schönberg Ensemble) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 45 | Greek | | 0 | 11-20 | Robert Zuidam | Reinbert de Leeuw | | Robert Zuidam | | Pierre Audi | Christof Hetzer | Christof Hetzer | | | Gail Skrela | Bernd Purkrabek | | | 18-Jun-2013 | Netherlands | Amsterdam | Muziekgebouw aan het IJ | 700 | Holland Festival, Delft Chamber Music Festival, November Music | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 227 | The Banker | Web Opera Series | The Social Opera House is the first online and virtual based opera house in the world. Its mission is to merge theatre with new information technologies. The Banker, the first opera series ever realized, launches its research project in the field of opera theatre and will lead the way for many other future projects. // In a Nutshell: Walter J. Conrad (bass/baritone) is a powerful banker who made economic history in Italy, and not only that: his figure, an “éminence grise” known to most, was able to influence through the years international politics, thanks to his natural talent as “intermediary”. Disgraced, Conrad secretly decides for a monastic life. After a long period of anonymity, on the night of the Holy Saturday, he prepares his “resurrection” and his return on the international scene. To do this, he tries to involve a young ambitious journalist (Jacob Gilbert, tenor) revealing to know the solution to the unresolved mysteries that marked Italian history in the last fifty years. The Banker is the first web opera series ever made. Since the shooting didn’t took place in a theatre but on location, the language is the one of the opera movie, differing however for its serial form. The narration is divided into episodes of maximum 10 minutes each and, thus, already thought-out for Web use. Even though originally made for a different medium than theatre, The Banker is however an opera thought to be reassembled for a complete display and to be staged in a normal theatre. The decision to make a serial opera comes from the vivid necessity of bringing this ancient but still actual language closer to the general public, and to demonstrate that it can still be popular and affordable to everyone. This is why, following this philosophy, the libretto leaves the classical meter for quick and sharp dialogues, embracing a simple and contemporary language. // After the production of The Banker – Pilot Episode, the audience was invited to our first experimental streaming by creating an event advertised through social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and others, or through Broadcast Lists on chat services such as Whatsup or even via dedicated Newsletters. The streaming was made available directly on the site of the theater www.socialoperahouse.org, starting at 9pm GMT+2 until 12pm of the same evening (Sunday, June 28, 2015). | The Social Opera House | Other | Other | 13 | English | Choice between English, Italian, French, German | 0 | 11-20 | Alberto Cara | Alessadro Cadario | | Stefano Simone Pintor | Alberto Cara, Stefano Simone Pintor | Stefano Simone Pintor | Alberto Allegretti | Alberto Allegretti | | | | Giulio Oldrini, Virginio Levrio | Andrea Pestarino | Giulio Oldrini, Virginio Levrio (Photography), Virginio Levrio (Video editing), Davide Puzziferri (Camera) | 28-Jun-2015 | Italy | | Web Streaming | 0 | The Social Opera House | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 228 | Conversations with my mother | | Commissioned by the Diamantfabriek, Conversations With My Mother is a full-length music theater production conceived by composer Benedict Weisser and director Matthias Mooij for chamber ensemble Nieuw Amsterdams Peil, two sopranos, an actress, and an actor. Mooij and Weisser structured the libretto out of fictional and autobiographical accounts of phone conversations between a mother and her son, written by one Belgian and six Dutch authors. Conversations portrays a wide scope of the forms that the relationship between a mother and her son can assume. It premiered in December 2013 at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, the Amsterdam venue for contemporary music, to high acclaim in the Dutch press. (five ***** and four **** stars out of five reviews in Dutch national newspapers). // Conversations with my Mother highlights the dysfunctional relationship between mother and son. It often proves impossible to say to your mother what you had intended. The three mothers in the music theater production communicate through listening, singing, crying and complaining. The son talks, stammers, yells and weighs his words. We follow them crisscross through the different stages of his life: child; graying; adolescent; adult. Going back and forth between old and young. The music theater production also explores the foundations of the relationship between mother and son. In a society where answers to moral and existential issues from a religious or ideological perspective are increasingly difficult to come by, the mother has the last word. She is the moral arbiter of the twenty-first century. | Diamantfabriek (Benedict Weisser, Matthias Mooij, Nieuw Amsterdams Peil) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 90 | Dutch | | 0 | 1-10 | Benedict Weisser | | | Benedict Weisser, Matthias Mooij | Abdelkader Benali, Oscar van den Boogaard, Herman Brusselmans, Omar Dahmani, Marcel Lenssen, Tommy Wieringa, Jibbe Willems | Matthias Mooij | Piia Maria | Judith de Zwart | | | | Maarten Warmerdam | Clare Gallagher | Benedict Weisser, Matthias Mooij (Concept), Sylvia Stoetzer (Artistic Director) | 7-Dec-2013 | Netherlands | Amsterdam | Muziekgebouw aan het IJ | 700 | Diamantfabriek, Ensemble Nieuw Amsterdams Peil | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 229 | If you know what I mean | Ein szenisches Konzert über die Kunst des Übersetzens (A staged concert on the art of translation) | DieOrdnungDerDinge (the order of things) is a Berlin-based ensemble integrated by actor-musicians, specialised in developing staged concerts out of a highly visual and performative musical repertoire. The stage work with this inherently theatrical repertoire allows for the creation of a hybrid form between performance and concert: the pieces are seamlessly integrated with theatrical transitions that highlight ideas present in them, or enable atmospheres necessary for the works to come; the musicians turn into “characters” leading the public in and out of the different worlds; in short, the “classical” separation of the senses in the concert situation is dissolved, giving way to a integration of all parts involved, out of which something new can emerge. // In “If you know what I mean” the ensemble explores the fascinating world of translation, both in its text-related sense (in the stage work) as well as in an audiovisual meaning: the works used as basis for the piece use different sorts of translations between acoustic, visual or narrative/emotional layers: e.g., Chen, in adagio, aims to translate the emotional content of a Bruckner symphony fragment through a detailed facialemotional choreography entrusted to four performers (hearing the piece through headphones); Giner-Miranda's enlightened transforms musical performance into an audiovisual event in itself, by placing small LED lights on a violinist's arms and having her play in the dark; Steen-Andersen wonders whether a piece for cello remains the same piece when we transpose its movements onto a different instrument in next to beside besides, effectively a series of choreographic translations. All through the piece, these seemingly straightforward transpositions yield new, unexpected results, raising, with a touch of lightness and a keen sense of humour, the question of whether translation is actually possible at all, and to what extent do our own expectations and experiences play a role in this seemingly objective process. // Programme: Irene Galindo, Ein Augenblick (2009), on a video by Telemach Wiesinger / Steen-Andersen, Next to beside besides (2004-2007), Versions for cello, violin, flute and snare drum / Iñigo Giner-Miranda, enlightened (2013), for violin and LEDs / Ana M. Rodríguez, Les miroirs, (premiere) for violin, cello and video / Carolyn Chen, Adagio (2009), for four performers listening to a fragment of Bruckner's 7. Symphony / Cathy van Eck, 412 Meter laufen (premiere), for walking performer | DieOrdnungDerDinge | Performance | Black Box | 70 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Irene Galindo, Simon Steen-Andersen, Iñigo Giner-Miranda, Ana M. Rodríguez, Carolyn Chen, Cathy van Eck | Iñigo Giner-Miranda | | | | | Veronika Grosse | Veronika Grosse | Katja Hagedorn | | | | | | 19-Jun-2014 | Germany | Berlin | TAK Theater | 100 | ehrliche arbeit Berlin | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Instrumentales Theater |
| 230 | Desiring Machines | An Experimental Opera | “Desiring Machines” is an experimental opera based on a series of mythical female figures. Music and Dramatic installations for voice, instrumental trio, electronics and video, accented with manifestations in which the characters appear as visual and audible points on a pitch-dark stage. The title of this work is taken from the novel "Envy" (1927) by the author Yury Olesha. Here is the machine "Ophelia", that one of the main characters invented, described: "Sings our love songs now, stupid love songs of flowers of old age. It falls in love, is jealous, cries, has dreams ... ". These are universal human characteristics, which in many ways go to all the female characters we work with. This we have developed as a concept in the context of Deleuze / Guattari's thoughts on "Desiring Machines" (from the book "Anti-Oedipus"): We see these characters as machinery, which, like Ophelia, both productive mechanical machines but also goes out of their static roles and take part in the action - "heavy rows to the new era" (Olesha). On this basis, we wanted to multiply up this Ophelia computer, to apply to a majority of the machines - a majority of female figures that make up a larger circuit. This is specified in the project's movements: the characters appear in glimpses - "unlock the silence" - which points to a dark stage where they can not be grasped as a whole, either in time or as body. Various types of distortions and shadows makes each character only perceived as isolated body parts, movements and images. Thus, each female figure will be tied to a part of the body. Audibly the piece works with distance: it constantly switch between music produced in the room and the sound that the audience will get directly to their ears through nearfield headphones. This distance is also created through a musical range from sheer light coat of the early Baroque to electronic music - all filtered and composed together into a whole. | Erik Dæhlin | Performance | Black Box | 65 | Dutch, English | | 0 | 1-10 | Erik Daehlin | | | Edy Poppy, Hanne Ramsdal, Mette Karlsvik, Eirik Fauske, Marco Demian Vitanza, Marilyn Monroe, Heiner Müller, William Shakespeare, Pier Paolo Pasolini | | Erik Daehlin | Tormod Lindgren | | | | Amund Sjølie Sveen | Erik Daehlin | | Erik Daehlin (Idea) | 3-Jun-2013 | Norway | | | 36 | Erik Dæhlin / Produsentbyrået - Morten Kippe; Dramatikkens Hus, Festispillene i Bergen, Brageteateret | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 231 | Absence is the Only Real | | Concert installation piece. About the absence of our two fathers. | Erik Dæhlin, Håkon Mørch Stene | Performance | Black Box | 45 | | | 0 | 1-10 | Erik Daehlin | | | | | | | | | | Erik Daehlin, Amund Sjølie Sveen; Bjørn Kjetil Undem/millimedia | Erik Daehlin, Martin Myrvold | | Erik Daehlin (Idea), Håkon Mørch Stene (Co-Developer) | 4-Jul-2015 | Norway | | | 30 | Erik Dæhlin; Norwegian Academy of Music, TOU Scene | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Instrumentales Theater |
| 232 | Inquyre | | Inquyre is an original work for SSAATTBB voices, choral ensemble, live interactive visuals, electronics, spatialised sound and light sculpture. The work itself is composed of 9 stages of music, set to a Libretto of poetry and 9 abstracted images. With an overarcing narrative based on the four themes Concealed/Revealed/Part/Apart, Inquyre is an exploration of scale and our position within it. A live choral ensemble walk amongst the audience, the mobile aspect of the group and their intimacy with the audience designed to challenge the performative expectations of choral music. 16 omni-directional speakers hang down above the audience into the space, intertwined with interactive light sculpture. Each speaker produces one voice along with localised sound, allowing the audience to walk through the performance interacting with it temporally and spatially. This means that depending on where you stand, you can decide upon your own harmonic and melodic experience. We want to create an explorative space where each region of the room becomes a uniquely spatialised voice. This playful approach to vocal music is for audiences of all ages and music tastes; to experience a completely different treatment of the human voice and the choir as an instrument. Projected visuals frame the space, created by the visual artist Frigge Fri (DNK), her work expanding upon the scale of ideas being considered and shared. Joined with the interactive nature of the lighting sculpture above the audience, the eyes experience is married to the ears, and the sound can be seen to move around the room. The use of a libretto composed of abstracted images and poetry allows us the freedom as composers and designers to respond directly to motifs, without being too prescriptive about the presumed outcome and experience of the audience. This freedom to experience uniquely, allows for a more complete experience of the subject matter being explored. The work was then scored in graph form, where Intensity v Time images were shared with the audience and allowed them to predict in some way what was to come, again without being too prescriptive. The purpose of creating an immersive experience like this was to surround an audience member in media that they then had limited control to experience on their own terms. By removing the front ended treatment of music, and shaping a world around the listener and viewer, the work immerses the audience member and induces a state of reverence. | Peter Power, Eat My Noise | Performance | Black Box, Moving Audience | 40 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Peter Power; David Duffy | | John O'Brien | Peter Power | | Peter Power | | | | | Frigge Fri | Stephen Dodd | Eat My Noise | Miki Barlok (Photography), Orla O'Kane (Architectural consultant) | 8-Nov-2014 | Ireland | | | 70 | Eat My Noise | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 233 | Pills or Serenades | Eine Stimmungsstudie (A Mood Study) | “Pills or Serenades” is a study on moods and the “mood-making” of music, and at the same time a play with the paradox of “editing”: a montage of volatility and a confrontation of different atmospheres. Recitative material of different styles and textures is cut up and put together again in such a way that the listener feels exposed to a whimsically moody chimera. That music has the potential to manipulate moods is a well-known fact. “Pills or Serenades” explores two interlocked levels of impact: experiencing emotion – music influences our inner mood, recognizing emotion – a musical experience is accorded an inner mood. The work resembles a sensuous test assembly that enables comparative listening. Ambiguous text sequences are set to music in a “vowels-generated” way: a certain sound of a modus or scale is assigned to each vowel. In this way, the text determines the melody and the implied assessments of traditional melodic phrases are set to music multiple times so that the texts can seem happy, sad, even-tempered or exaggerated. The viewer is observer and witness of this emotional rollercoaster between natural participation and enjoyment of a highly artificial language, moods as artefacts. | Berliner Festspiele/MaerzMusik (Chico Mello) | Performance | Black Box | 75 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Chico Mello | | | Tobias Dutschke | | Adeline Rosenstein, Yvonne Harder | Stefan Oppenländer | Stefan Oppenländer, Marie Guillon Le Masne | | | | Felix Grimm | Endre Ketzel | | 16-Mar-2013 | Germany | Berlin | Haus der Berliner Festspiele | 230 | Chico Mello, Berliner Festspiele / MaerzMusik, Hellerau – European Center for the Arts Dresden | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 234 | Confessions | Erdvinė mono opera tamsoje (Spatial mono opera in the dark) | The opera creators group – Jens, Åsa and Rūta met at the 2010 New Music Incubator project in Latvia, and they were united by one goal – to create a spatial opera in the dark, especially expanding the possibilities of the acoustic surroundings. The work was inspired by their interest in spatial electronics, in particular by spatial acoustic sound and its impact on imagination. The Christian idea of the seven deadly sins lies at the basis of the libretto. The seven parts of the “Confessions” are concerned with the seven cardinal sins – lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride. The intuitive relationship that appeared between the creators from the beginning of the collaboration is transferred to the opera at a musical level. The “Confessions” unites the authors’ long-cherished ideas of creative experiments: performing music in the dark, involving other senses (smell, touch) and allegedly completely removing the visual aspect. However in the opera, the latter is really the most activated factor in the listener’s imagination – through abstract audio images and concrete pre-recorded sounds that produce strong images linked to feelings, sensations or objects. // Instructions for spectators: The spectators will sit blindfolded in the dark (blindfolds will be handed out before the performance). There are three types of seats in the hall. The “passive” ones are for those who are sensitive to physical contact and wish to avoid it. The sensations of those who will choose “active” seats will have them actively provoked. The only special “Pink chair” is free of charge, and the person who will win a competition will get it. The occupant of the seat will experience a set of extreme acoustic surroundings, smells, tastes and touches. Those who wish to get this seat need to make a sincere confession of one sin on confessions@noa.lt. The person will be contacted and he/she will have to sign a contract. Other spectators, buying tickets will have the chance to choose the zone (“passive” or “active”) where they would like to sit. One opera's performance is designed for 22 or 43 spectators. | OPEROMANIJA (Spatial Opera Company) | Performance | Black Box, Audience Participation | 64 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Jens Hedman, Rūta Vitkauskaitė | | | | | | | | | | | Karolis Juknys | Vytautas Bastys | | 17-Apr-2015 | Lithuania | Vilnius | Column Hall, Trades Union House | 64 | OPEROMANIJA, Spatial Opera Company | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 235 | Wide Slumber | | "Pattern your breath on the sound of moth wings, magnified and frenzied, as you fight for sleep in a suffocating tangle of sheets. This is a poetic fantasia, an erotic nightmare-scape. So we dream the same – do we dream the same?" Wide Slumber is an evening long music theatre performance weaving together live music composed by Valgeir Sigurðsson with visuals crafted by VaVaVoom Theatre (S. Sunna Reynisdóttir & Sara Martí). The performance is inspired by the award-winning book of poems Wide slumber for lepidopterists by a.rawlings,The poems are a disorienting yet compelling dreamscape of butterflies and caterpillars and killing jars, where the waking mind’s prose transforms into the sleeper’s poetry. Tracking the stages of sleep and pairing them with the life cycle of Lepidopterae (butterflies and moths), insomnia is mirrored in the birth of the egg, narcolepsy in larval hatching. And when the caterpillar starts its final moult, dreams begin, weaving around us as tightly as a cocoon until we are somnambulant, a chrysalis ready to emerge as a moth. In the staging of Wide Slumber the audience is lulled into a cocoon where the borders between dreams and reality are blurred. A group of singers, musicians, and performers conjure an ethereal and visceral world of cyclic metamorphosis through music, puppetry and moving scenography. Each of the three singers embody personae within the original text; The Insomniac, The Lepidopterist and The Somnopterist. The performance was developed during residencies and presented gradually through concerts, installations, short videos / trailers and performances, leading up to the rehearsal period in the end of April 2014. We presented a 15 minute taster of the performance during APAP in New York in January 2014, at the SoHo theatre loft of David Lang and Suzanne Bocanegra. A short video was launched in February and the project was a part of Vinnslan; the opening of Tjarnarbíó theatre on March 29th. A team of scientists including Harvard University lepidopterists and University College London sleep research scientists worked closely with the artists in the creation of Wide Slumber. We have curated a series of events to be presented in tandem with the performance, such as a butterfly pinning workshop and lectures on the metamorphoses of butterflies and the different stages of sleep. | Valgeir Sigurðsson, VaVaVoom Theatre | Performance | Black Box | 60 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Valgeir Sigurðsson | | | a. rawlings | | Sara Martí | Eva Signý Berger | Harpa Einarsdóttir | Sigríður Sunna Reynisdóttir | Valgerður Rúnarsdóttir | Ingi Bekk, Pierre-Alain Giraud | Ingi Bekk | Dan Bora | Marie Tanya Keller (Loom design) | 24-May-2014 | Iceland | Reykjavík | Tjarnarbíó Theatre | 200 | VaVaVoom Theatre, Bedroom Community, Tjarnarbíó Theatre, Reykjavík Arts Festival | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Videokunst, Gesang |
| 236 | Įstabusis ir graudusis PLANAS B (The Most Excellent and Lamentable PLAN B) | Music, theatre and visual performance after the cartoons by Herluf Bidstrup | “The Most Excellent and Lamentable PLAN B” is a performance where music and theatre, image and sound, higher school students and graduates, still unknown and already famous, artists of the young generation, who work in Lithuania and those who return from abroad for performances, act together. They all have built and inhabited the theatre “house” where everything is the same as in the world outside it, but everything is very different. It has its own laws, its own logic, the sky and hell, angels and little imps. As it is fit, the identity of the PLAN B is implemented by its language. Believe us, after the performance you are sure to say “Tchke!!!”. The performance is based after cartoons of the Danish artist Herluf Bidstrup (1912– 1988). The idea to bring back from oblivion funny drawings that we saw in our childhood in the old book bound in green, appeared an attractive challenge to the new generation. Vidas Bareikis, the performance director and leader of the theatre movement “No Theatre” searched an improvisational key to very precise caricatures of everyday situations drawn by Bidstrup. The composer Rūta Vitkauskaitė created an audio picture for them performed live by a musicians’ ensemble and the actors. The play was given on 5 December 2013, marking the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, at the Great Hall of the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre. Presented by the students of the director Oskaras Koršunovas’ class, it was the first serious test on a professional stage where the set designer Simona Biekšaitė constructed a live conceptual interdisciplinary space, while the costume designer Liuka Songailaitė gave every personage a completed graphic form. | Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre & OPEROMANIJA | Other | Proscenium Stage | 70 | Lithuanian | | 0 | > 20 | Ruta Vitkauskaite | Ricardas Sumila, Marija Grikeviciute | | | Herluf Bidstrup | Vidas Bareikis | Simona Bieksaite | Liuka Songailaite | | | | Matas Simonis | Kastytis Narmontas | | 5-Dec-2013 | Lithuania | Vilnius | Lithuanian National Drama Theatre | 660 | Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, OPEROMANIJA | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 237 | ELECTRA: Rache (ELECTRA: Revenge) | | Rache chronicles four tales of vengeance. Four women take the law into their own hands: the biblical Judith, The Bride from Tarantino's cult film Kill Bill, Elektra from the ancient Greek drama by Aeschylus, and, stemming from harsh reality, the German mother Marianne Bachmeier. Driven by perhaps questionable yet somehow understandable motives, they take the conflict to the extreme by committing a murder. Revenge as the ultimate breach of impotence, when all other attempts to influence or change the course of events has failed. The performance is about adventure and empowerment, sexuality and motherhood, militancy and courage, justice and compassion. ELECTRA and composer Boudewijn Tarenskeen allow four deadly women the benefit of the doubt when assessing their act, bringing them to life with the finesse of a new music ensemble and the power of a rock band. Tarenskeen and the musicians of ELECTRA use audible, visible and tangible means to show how justice and anger, love and violence are interrelated. Hatred and compassion, motherly love and lust. How beauty can also be hidden within bloody revenge. The selected stories go beyond serving as the compelling motivation for this haunting music. Each story tells something about the prevailing morality of an era; they derive their dramatic weight mainly from the question whether the act was justified: was the woman acting from a primitive instinct, was she guided by a supernatural law or was the decision legitimized through purely rational grounds? And who can judge this? The composer worked extremely closely with each musician. Therefore, for example, the role of Marianne Bachmeier is given to recorder player Susanna Borsch; she is of German origin and recalls the dramatic case well. And violinist Monica Germino, who grew up in the United States, plays violent character of The Bride from Kill Bill. In Rache the musicians slip into the skin of a mythical or historical character that they would never wish to be or emulate, with the goal of gaining an in-depth understanding of their personages. Armed with their instruments, they examine the arguments that led to revenge. Musically and theatrically, they take turns interpreting the scenario that underlies their performance. A soloist functions as the protagonist for each part, assisted by the remaining three who function as antagonists, an orchestra pit, gerauschmacher (noise-makers), or technicians. | Peter van Amstel | Performance | Black Box | 66 | German, English | | 0 | 1-10 | Boudewijn Tarenskeen | | | | | | Nico de Rooij, Djana Covic | | Cecile Brommer | | | Nico de Rooij, Djana Covic | Micha de Kanter | | 28-May-2015 | Netherlands | Rotterdam | Schouwburg | 230 | Stichting Electra | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Instrumentales Theater |
| 238 | Captives of the City | A subterranean theatrical experience | Deep underground, ideas are spreading and change is beckoning. The Captives have a choice: to embrace the terrifying uncertainly of change or maintain the status quo… During 2015, Chamber Made Opera collaborated with independent company Lemony S Puppet Theatre for ‘Captives of the City’, a dynamic fusion of digital puppetry, live animation, music and performance. This new chamber opera tackled fundamental questions of our time and was performed in a secret location in the depths of the Arts Centre during February 2015. ‘Captives of the City’ was inspired by recent global events and the worldwide demand for political change. New political movements are forming and existing minor parties are strengthening. Although all these movements have vastly different wants, the one common thread that binds them is the desire for mainstream politics to do things differently. They are movements acting from a belief that the authorities have failed the people. ‘Captives of the City’ is a radical, layered exploration of the desire for change and the internal and physical battles fought to achieve it. Using custom-designed animation technology fused with live performance, 'Captives of the City' examines the artists’ role within charged political times. The work also explores ways in which digital technologies and social networking platforms have impacted on contemporary processes of collective action. The premiere season was a site-specific performance, taking place in unusual, underground, back-of-house spaces at the Arts Centre Melbourne. Directed by Sarah Kriegler, the work contained musical movements for percussion and double bass composed by David Young alongside a full electronic sound score by Jethro Woodward. The composition – along with the story developed by Sarah Kriegler and dramaturg Ben Grant - inhabited a sophisticated digital world created by animator Dave Jones and performed by puppeteer Jacob Williams, performer Adam Pierzchalski and musicians Matthias Schack-Arnott and Mark Cauvin. | Chamber Made Opera (Lemony S Puppet Theatre) | Performance | Site Specific, Moving Audience | 60 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | David Young | Jethro Woodward | | Sarah Kriegler | | Sarah Kriegler | | | Ben Grant | | | | Jethro Woodward | Dave Jones (Animator) | 10-Feb-2015 | Australia | Melbourne | Arts Centre Melbourne | 42 | Chamber Made Opera, Lemony S Puppet Theatre; Arts Centre Melbourne | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 239 | Orpheus im Äther: Die Schlepperoper konzertant (Orpheus On Air: A Smuggler's Opera) | | The river Evros is the southeastern border of the EU. Where once Orpheus’ head was floating - after he had alighted from the underworld and his body was torn apart by the maenads. Now he is returning to the European border as an unfortunate people’s smuggler. And the path into Europe turns into the path to the realm of the dead. This smuggler’s opera concentrates on a figure which nowadays is mainly referred to as criminal whereas in times of the Cold War was a hero as escape agent. The smuggler Orpheus is a kind of modern service provider, who defends his business and at the same time insists on the fact that this commercial aspect of his work in no way contradicts the higher principle of love. The theatre collective andcompany&Co. translates its characteristic mix of discursive and documentary texts into a musical structure borrowing elements from Monteverdi’s und Gluck’s operas on the Orfeo myth. The result is a dense musical score that takes the audience onto a journey through the history of migration. This journey through the mythical as well as the real world is being accompanied by ‘beautiful singing’ – indispensable as Orpheus‘ weapon – it is the key to the border crossing. Starting in 2014 andcompany and their artistic collaborators from Belgium, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands devised a music theatre piece which leaves genre borders behind: baroque opera meets electronic sounds, arias meet slogans, and antique myths meet the latest news. First produced as a theatre piece, andcompany&Co. then further developed it into a radio play which was selected ‘radio play of the month’ by the German Academy of Performing Arts (Deutsche Akademie der Darstellenden Künste) in April 2015. The jury concludes that ‘Orpheus (…) combines clear political analysis with artistic mastership’. The radio play is also nominated for the Karl-Sczuka- Award and as submission to Prix Europa. Commissioned by the Festival Belluard Bollwerk in 2015, andcompany&Co. adapted the radio play for the stage and created a minimalistic concert-like setting where ancient mythology stretches to tell us about intolerable realities in the 21st century. The setting consists of 4 musicians (recorder, cello, spinet, electronics) framing 4 speakers and 2 opera singers (baritone and counter tenor), sitting in a semi-circle in front of the audience. The curtains open for the spectator's mental cinema. | andcompany&Co. | Performance | Site Specific | 60 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Sascha Sulimma | | | Alexander Karschnia, Nicola Nord | | Sascha Sulimma, Nicola Nord, Alexander Karschnia | | | | | | | | Nicola Nord, Alexander Karschnia, Sascha Sulimma (Artistic direction) | 25-Jun-2015 | Switzerland | Fribourg | Festival Belluard Bollwerk International | 200 | Festival Belluard Bollwerk International | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 240 | Der Sieg über die Sonne (The Victory over the Sun) | | In 1913, an opera premiered in St. Petersburg, which with one stroke shattered the tradition of an entire genre. In their creation “The Victory Over the Sun”, several protagonists of the Russian Futuristic movement (among them the artist Kasimir Malevich) combined apparently incompatible elements of painting, language, composition and performance. This endeavour culminated in an artistic happening that did away with every logic of the traditional music-theatre. Historically, the show has been referred to as a scandal, as it jarred the hearts and heads of a whole urban society. Precisely 100 years later, at the beginning of a new century, when there is not much left of the energy of Futurist thinking and inventions, NOVOFLOT and four composers take the material of the “Sun”-opera as a foundation for a reboot. For one week, four cultural institutions in Berlin (the Academy of the Arts, Hamburger Bahnhof (Museum for Contemporary Art), the Radialsystem and the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz) will host five different performances, including the ‘training camp’, ‘brain-inspection’, ‘observatories’ and ‘parliaments of the future’. The spectator has the choice, he can either watch one show or all, three in 24 hours or four on five days, two performances several times or only half of one. The opera “The Victory Over the Sun” was never and still isn’t a self-enclosed or continuous work. It is rather the artistic expression of an unrulable variety of expectations, necessities and departures. It is a multi-part announcement, which is shaped by old and new sounds, languages and images pronounced at the appropriate volume. | NOVOFLOT | Performance | Site Specific, Public Space, Moving Audience, Black Box | 300 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Aleksandra Gryka, Klaus Lang, Martin Schüttler, Moritz Gagern | Vicente Larrañaga | | | | Sven Holm | Elisa Limberg | Elisa Limberg, Anke Gänz | Malte Ubenauf, Georg Morawietz | | Karolina Serafin | | Georg Morawietz | Electro-acoustic studio / Akademie der Künste (Recordings) | 12-Oct-2013 | Germany | Berlin | Volksbühne, Hamburger Bahnhof, Radialsystem V, Akademie der Künste | 200 | NOVOFLOT; Akademie der Künste, Hamburger Bahnhof (Museum for Contemporary Arts), Radialsystem, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 241 | T-House-Tour | | What happens when the subsidized cultural institutions were to disappear from the societal map one by one? If we broke with the particularly German tradition of statefunded art, music, literature and theatre invention and the regional and municipal governments left the field (and their houses) exclusively to commercially interested parties? Purely a vision of a distant future? Hardly: not a day goes by without reports about the imminent closure of a cultural institution. Questions about the future of institutional cultural establishments are not new. And yet little thought is put into models of prospective, mobile cultural offers beyond festivals and guest performances. With their project T-HOUSE-TOUR the Berlin opera company NOVOFLOT attempts a pilot exercise of possible forms and structures of musical theatre in motion. The THOUSE- TOUR is not a production in the strict sense of the word. It is an improvisational work in progress about forms of musical theatre that do not depend on the organisational and spatial circumstances of a single institution, but adapt to where they appear. With the project’s title, NOVOFLOT creates a link to the ancient teahouse culture of Asia including its definitions of hosting, ritual, contemplation and free discussion. The review of the two meanings of the T-HOUSE title reveals the artistic experiment of the tour: while NOVOFLOT on one hand examines the possibilities of mobile (and adaptive) performance structures, in the course of the T-HOUSE-TOUR it also transforms traditional (repertoire) forms of opera and musical theatre. Thus comes into being a largely improvised form of opera that is open to immediate reactions between the participants and for intervention by the visitors and audience members. | NOVOFLOT | Performance | Site Specific, Public Space, Moving Audience, Black Box | 690 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Michael Wertmüller | Vicente Larrañaga | | Jürg Laederach, Yoko Towada | | Sven Holm | GRAFT Architects & Nino Tugushi | Sara Kittelmann | Malte Ubenauf | | Karolina Serafin, Philip Kießling | Jörg Bittner, Felix Grimm | Jean-Boris Szymczak | | 6-Sep-2014 | Germany | Berlin | Volksbühne, Radialsystem V, Akademie der Künste | 300 | NOVOFLOT | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 242 | Don`t Play! | Eine dokumentarische Spektralgymnastik | Don't Play! (2013) is a performance project developed in collaboration with the Dresden-based music ensemble El Perro Andaluz. It takes as subject the musicians’ biographies and work in the field of (new) music, investigating the `composition` of musical performance and ensemble practice. How can music be understood as a collaborative process occurring around scores, via the work of performers? What makes El Perro Andaluz distinct as an ensemble? Working with the musicians as performers, the piece intermixes documentation, animation, and re-construction. It is intentionally a playful work, spirited by the individual personalities of the musicians. The concept for the piece was framed around the conceptual challenge to consider musicians in the act of sounding, without allowing the musicians to play a composed score: the paradox Don't Play! Research began by interviewing the musicians, to understand details of their relationship to their instruments, working process, insider jokes, and daily activities. The libretto was then developed from this source material by the Director, Jens Heitjohann. Working collaboratively with choreographer Elizabeth Waterhouse, sound designer Max Schneider, and founding member of El Perro Andaluz, Lennart Dohms, the piece Don't Play! disrupts and textually contextualises modes of understanding musicality, and uses theatrical tools to problemetize the norms of musical perception. Music and musical instruments appear but never classically. Instead the performers construct instruments out of paper, enact their daily schedule as a foley and react to in-ear recordings. One piece of composed music is repeated three times in silence, under conditions of different interpretation. By giving the performers agency to discuss their daily activities outside the concert format, where norms of understanding are more fragile, Don't Play! is intended to enable reflection on the contemporary needs for seeing and hearing, and the relation of the individual performer, the ensemble, and the collective dispositiv of theatrical spectatorship. The German word `Klangkörper,` translated literally as `soundbody` becomes unexpectedly visible and audible. | Jens Heitjohann, El Perro Andaluz (Schaubühne Lindenfels Leipzig) | Performance | Black Box | 70 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | | | | Jens Heitjohann | | Jens Heitjohann, Elizabeth Waterhouse | | | | Elizabeth Waterhouse | | | Max Schneider | Lennart Dohms (Musical Advisor) | 1-Feb-2013 | Germany | Leipzig | Schaubühne Lindenfels | 122 | Schaubühne Lindenfels Leipzig | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Instrumentales Theater |
| 243 | Music (Music) | | “Musik” is a work of musical theatre by the young and already noted composer Michael Langemann. The original text was created by the 21 year old author, Helene Hegemann based on the play of the same name by Frank Wedekind (1864 - 1918). The play centres on the young Klara, a student of singing. Her professor predicts a glittering career as a wagnerian opera singer if she drops out of the Conservatoire and instead takes private lessons with him. The young woman follows the advice of her married teacher and consents to being drawn into an affair with him. She becomes pregnant and has an abortion at his insistence. This sets her on a path upon which every development leads, step by step, to her destruction. Why then ‘Musik’? At first even the idea of making an opera out of Wedekind’s play is a formidable one. The project focusses on the story of the main characters which is above and beyond the main objective of the Experimental Musical Theatre Fund: To explain the importance of music. For this reason, this appears to be a team to back: Michael Langemann, the young composer who's work does not submit to fashion - as demonstrated by his existing body of work which integrates elements of pop-music to create a unique musical language. Helene Hegemann the librettist and director who focuses her sharp and relentlessly incisive eye on the present, and in particular on the younger generation, and the aspirations evidenced in their lyrics as well as in theatre and film. Jamie Oritz who brings the conceptual grasp and the musical and literary background needed for such a complex project. The experienced visual team consists of production designer Janina Audick and of video artist Kathrin Krottenthaler. (Stephanie Graeve for the Jury / Fonds Experimentelles Musiktheater 2012) With his production ‘Musik’ that consists of both vocal parts and speaking parts, the classically trained composer and conductor Michael Langemann weaves influences and allusions from pop-culture into the work and integrates them with a large orchestra. His music invokes a variety of musical forms and deals freely with allusions to a wide variety of musical styles from different eras. Richard Wagner quotes can seamlessly transition into R’n’B , an inspired baroque lament can be followed by a crazy aria interspersed with dance-floor rhythms. | Fonds Experimentelles Musiktheater, Oper Köln | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 100 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Michael Langemann | Walter Kobéra | | Helene Hegemann | Frank Wedekind | Helene Hegemann | Janina Audick | Janina Audick | Janine Ortiz, Roland Quitt | | Kathrin Krottenthaler | Nicol Hüngsberg | | Janine Ortiz (Concept) | 7-Dec-2013 | Germany | Cologne | Oper Köln | 500 | Fonds Experimentelles Musiktheater, Oper Köln | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 244 | Orlando | | Orlando is a hybrid Roman á clef based on real events; Orlando a hybrid polymorphic work of musical theatre. Earlier versions of the Orlando tale are based on the epics of Ariesto and Janine Oritz mixes the Virginia Woolf’s Orlando with this earlier source. In short scenes the life of the young nobleman Orlando (Mezzo soprano) is represented as he transitions across time and gender. We first see Orlando in the 16th century as a guest at the court of the elderly Queen Elizabeth (Tenor). We experience his transformation into a woman as well as Orlando’s experience in the world of the future. A world where gender differences do not result in the usual advantages and disadvantages associated with gender. However the elimination of gender differences also brings with it a disassociation from personality. Just as Woolf’s novel is a literary and historical reflection of its own genre, so the operatic genre is ironic reflection of Opera plays an important role in this work. Orlando the time traveller becomes a metaphor for pushing boundaries. Ecstasy and furioso are declared to be aesthetic principles. Michael Langemann seduces us by playing with artistic forms including popular music. The thousands of subtleties of harmony and instrumentalisation ultimately have but one purpose: To tell a gripping story which draws upon rich characterisations to stage a dazzling revue. Fast paced scene follows fast paced scene and in the middle of it all Orlando asks the orchestra: “Are you the truth?” Of course the trumpet then sounds, proclaiming: “Yes, I am!” (Aurelien Bello in the programme booklet for „Orlando“) Orlando by Michael Langemann and Janine Ortiz operates as musical theatre at its best , perhaps because its narrative is divided into seven scenes which, more or less, lean on Virginia Woolf and also because the music possesses a congenial brazenness in revue and as chamber opera as it delves into a great songwriting tradition. (WDR 3 Opernblog, 17. June 2013) | Theater Bielefeld (Deutsche Bank Stiftung) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 45 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Michael Langemann | Aurélien Bello | Narah Chung, Hagen Enke | Janine Ortiz | | Bettina Geyer | AliénorDauchez, Julia Rommel | Svenja Gassen | Janine Ortiz | Claudia Braubach | | | | | 15-Jun-2013 | Germany | Bielefeld | Theater Bielefeld | 800 | Theater Bielefeld; Deutsche Bank Stiftung | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 245 | Moremi Ajasoro - The Storytelling Opera | | The importance of storytelling and oral tradition has always had a great weight in Africa. In the Yoruba culture the notion of opera exists but not in the conventional sense, an amalgamation of dance, singing, drumming and audience participation creates a very unique and exhilarating atmosphere. Telling the story of Moremi, the African warrior princess, the African storytelling technique would be infused with western classical musical influences to provide a short piece of exciting operatic theatre. The forty-five minute, multi-disciplinary, collaborative interactive performance would be made of a narrator, with chorus, dancers, a specialist African drummer and piano. The development of this project was funded by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland | April A Koyejo | Opera | Black Box | 45 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Pierre Audiger | | | April A Koyejo | | April A Koyejo | April A Koyejo | | | Stefanos Dimoulas | | | | April A Koyejo (Creator) | 19-Jun-2015 | United Kingdom | | | 145 | Symposium Co | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 246 | Tamar of the River | | "Tamar of the River" is a drama-desk nominated music-theatre work which elaborates on a short episode in the book of Genesis. Our story is told through a combination of traditional dramatic storytelling, exciting 12-part composed and improvisatory vocal singing, and inventive choreography and staging. In this war-divided world, one young woman is called to raise her voice. As Tamar sets out single-mindedly in pursuit of peace, each decision that brings her closer to her goal also brings unanticipated, sometimes tragic consequences. Resonating with the traumatic cyclical violence in the Middle East, Tamar is an allegory about ferocity of love and the potency of belief. It is about fear driving people to contradict themselves and act in opposition to their own wishes. The music draws from aspects of Jewish liturgical music, Islamic azans, European opera, jazz harmonies, African-American gospel, Balkan timbres, and even some Balinese monkey chant, while the score as a whole is situated inside the musical-theatre tradition. Weaving in and out of the action, the character of the River (God in this world) is sung and danced by multiple singers, creating a bridge between singing and speaking that reflects the bridge between reality and imagination that exists for our characters. The orchestration combines Eastern and Western instruments. For Tamar, the River’s music forms the path to a world she senses but finds difficult to articulate in words. But in singing Tamar finds a way to ecstatically unite herself with that world. But Tamar´s journey is not a linear one - at other times her intense personal struggles are overpowering and in these cases, music becomes an expression of what is raw and primal within her. In fact, this piece bounces between the primal and the transcendent, as Tamar journeys to integrate such polarities into a complete experience of the world. Development history: Tamar was first commissioned and workshopped by Signature Theatre Company under a grant from the American Musical Voices Project: The Next Generation. An oratorio version of the show was produced by New York Theatre Barn and Choral Chameleon in March 2013, (direction:Joe Barros; musical direction:Vince Peterson). Prospect Theater Company developed produced the world premiere production in October, 2013. In September, 2014, the album recording was released on Yellow Sound Label. | Prospect Theater Company | Opera | Black Box | 100 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Marisa Michelson | Matthew Aument | | Joshua H. Cohen, Marisa Michelson | | Daniel Goldstein | Brett Banakis | Candida Nicols | | Chase Brock | | Brian Tovar | Jeremy J. Lee | | 19-Sep-2013 | USA | New York | Baruch Performing Arts Center | 99 | Prospect Theatre Company | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 247 | Dve glave i devojka (Two Heads and a Girl) | Komična opera-bajka (Comic Opera-Fairy Tale) | At first sight, it might appear that the main theme of the opera Two Heads and the Girl is a reference to corporeality, which is quite topical in the world of today, since the modern technology has developed complex systems for correcting bodily flaws. But it is in this very aspect of human introspection that the concept of desire is embedded as a main drive of the need for change (or replacement). Such desire serves the corporeal abyss of human passions. However, the soul naturally strives for a different, extracorporeal awareness. In a human being, it operates through two instruments – emotions and reason. But since emotions are susceptible to direct influence of corporeal passions, the soul, in order to survive and save itself by triumphing over the corporeal, forms a pact with the reason. The story of this opera consists of such a trinity: the body, soul and reason. The trinity has its human forms embodied in the characters of Padma, Chandra and Bathi, but not quite literally – for they are created by an imbalanced mixture of the said human yearnings. The three of them represent nothing else than a crucified humanity. Severing of heads, once a common occurrence in the Indian mythology, represents a prerequisite for a man to discard the excessive attachment to thoughts and to (again) shift the focus of his existence to emotions. The character of the Narrator has been introduced into the story as a ‘voice of reason’ and he plays an important role of a participant, but also an instigator or a divertor of the plot. The music of the opera draws its inspiration from the heritage of the region, from a particular music archaeology. However, it is not India from which the composer collects the artefacts, but the Balkans, with its sound polysemy and rhythmical restlessness. The polysemy involves a collection of geographically and historically divergent impacts, which have accumulated in the culture and music of Balkan people, representing a meeting ground of music traditions of the European Mediterranean, Slavic people, of Levant with its amalgam of influences from the East, including the Asian people, and, through Romani people, with India. | Accademia Musicale Chigiana Siena (Isidora Žebeljan) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 70 | Serbian | | 0 | 11-20 | Isidora Žebeljan | Premil Petrevic | | Borislav Čičovački | | Ran Arthur Braun | Ran Arthur Braun | Angelina Atlagić | | | | | | | 12-Jul-2012 | Italy | Siena | Teatro die Rozzi | 500 | Accademia Musicale Chigiana Siena | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 248 | MONU - a multimedia requiem of war | | MONU is a multimedia requiem of war for large choir, string orchestra, organ, trombone, percussion, soprano and tenor, composed by Benjamien Lycke to a libretto by Mien Bogaert. The creation on April the 22th in the Concert Hall of Bruges (Belgium) was organised by the young artist collective synART, grounded in 2013 to stage contemporary music theatre through a synergy of different art forms. Their first production, MONU, crosses over boundaries between opera, oratorio, requiem, dance theatre and video art. The libretto of MONU forms a confrontation between text fragments of the classical requiem and quotes from poets, philosophers and journalists. Together, the quotes build a storyline about an individual who is thrown in the world at the end of the 19th century and soon gets acquainted with both nationalism and industrialisation. The individual experiences how christian morality is replaced by the Homeric code of honour loyalty and revenge. War is calling and words are translated in deeds. However, standing on the battlefield, the products of the industrialisation, the nationalistic pride and the Homeric code ingloriously drown in the mud. The individual is torn out of life as brutal as he was thrown into the world, and a heartbreaking lament of a lover who is left behind cannot change this. The highly dramatic composition of Benjamien Lycke tries to bridge the gap between post-1945 avant-garde music and more popular music (like movie soundtracks influenced by Wagner and Glass), aiming to reach a broad audience. MONU’s staging includes a choreography for six dancers and two opera soloists, a set design and several video projections. The dancers and opera soloists (stage directions by Mien Bogaert and choreography by Talitha De Decker) visualise the story of the individual, playing with steel reinforcement cages (products of the industrialisation), earth (the mud of a trench warfare), and jute (required to restrain the mud). The performers are playing in front of a huge LED wall on which the process of deforestation is shown, with the tree as a metaphor for the individual soldier (the video projections were done by architect Jason Slabbynck). Due to our limited resources, we could rent the Concert Hall of Bruges for only one day. On this one day, we managed to build up the set design and the LED wall, to design the entire lightning plan, to do a technical rehearsal, to create MONU for a full house and to clean up everything before midnight. | synART | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 90 | Dutch | | 0 | > 20 | Benjamien Lycke | David Anne | | Mien Bogaert | | Mien Bogaert | Jason Slabbynck | Nathalie Aerts | Mien Bogaert | Talitha De Decker | Jason Slabbynck | | | | 22-Apr-2015 | Belgium | Bruges | Concertgebouw Brugge | 1290 | synART | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Tanztheater |
| 249 | ANASTASIA - Die rätselhafte Geschichte der letzten Zarentochter (ANASTASIA - The secret story of the last daughter of the Russian Tsar) | | The project was once performed as a preview and had afterwards 5 performances including premiere. Members of Bremer Musical Company and EUMAC Bremen were on stage plus several kids as a children's choir for the market and orphan house scenes. The show was put on stage to tape and record it to find interested producers who would produce the show open end or for a longer period of time. Changes can be made if talked about with and agreed by Mr. Blaeschke. It is planned to put the show back on in 2016 or 2017 or later, when money is raised for it. Scores are just available for piano and vocals - but could be presented within a couple of weeks if needed for orchestra (at present just rough version at hand). The show were using instrumental playbacks recorded in a studio with some real instruments and computer instruments. Plan is to play live as in other shows of Bremer Musical Company and of Thomas Blaeschke Usually done world wide for performances). | Thomas Blaeschke | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 110 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Thomas Blaeschke | | | Thomas Blaeschke, Sara Daehn, Nina Arena | | Nina Arena | Roland Wehner | Chirstin Schemmel | | Joel Detiege | | Jan Stolle, Roland Wehner | Marten Ulrich (Palais aux Etoiles) | Corvin Bahn, Thomas Blaeschke, Michael Heyn, Ferdinand von Seebach (Arrangement) | 10-Dec-2013 | Germany | Bremen | Musical Theater Bremen | 1450 | EUMAC Ltd. | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 250 | Jungala | | JUNGALA is a contemporary performance for children from 4 to 8 yrs of age. An interdisciplinary piece where music, light, visuals and movement combine to create a unique performance. Two dancers and two musicians are confronted with a tree that finds home in the desert while used to live in a dense green jungle. They move in a performance space made of intriguing images and sounds! Viewers can get carried away in a mysterious outdoor world... JUNGALA was inspired by the jungles of India and by the painting “The sleeping gypsy” by Henry Rousseau. I began imagining a new story and arrived at this title which in Sanskrit means «wild land», and that can also be understood as "dense earth" like a jungle, or as "dry land" like a desert. Plants and trees occupy a very important place in our life. Many generations pass by them. Every death of a tree brings another mysterious story, mostly untold. What if the trees started telling us what they saw and how they pass through life? It would be quite a great time for any child to hear. Perhaps this could be one among many reasons why we have so many generations of novels about trees and plants, fabulous fables, stories, songs, and myths making the tree a time honored metaphorical resource in our thinking. This was the context of our thinking process: an aged tree in communication with the young audience, telling events, stories. | Vedanza | Performance | Black Box | 40 | No language | | 4 | 1-10 | Rajivan Ayyappan | | | | | Rajivan Ayyappan | | Carmen Di Pinto | | Emanuela Iacopini | Matsuo Kunihiko | Nico Tremblay | Rajivan Ayyappan, Sascha Ley | Rajivan Ayyappan (Artistic director) | 5-Dec-2013 | Luxembourg | Luxembourg City | Mierscher Kulturhaus | 1100 | Vedanza | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Tanztheater, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 251 | Čtyři tři dva jedna (Four Three Two One) | | Boca Loca means „crazy, mad, glib-tongued" in Spanish. Wordplay, play with sounds and utterances. Rhythm, song, speech, and things half-sung and half-spoken. Featuring original works composed especially for the BLL group by Martin Smolka (cofounder of the AGON orchestra and author of the opera Nagano) and Michal Nejtek (classical music composer, works with The Plastic People of the Universe, member of jazz group Limbo). The Boca Loca Lab group was founded in 2007 by Jiří Adámek, who has developed an original type of music theatre, in which he blends the musically composed structure, stylized acting and unusual approach to language. Boca Loca Lab group has been awarded various prizes, for example the international award Music Theatre Now for Ticks Ticks Politics (2006) in Berlin and the Prize for original theatre expression at the KONTAKT 2009 festival in Torun. Adámek was named Personality of the Year by the Next Wave Festival 2007 in the alternative theatre section for musical-scenic composition and its theoretical reflection. He received the award for best young director for The Europeans project at the 2012 MESS festival in Sarajevo. | Boca Loca Lab (Jiří Adámek, Michal Nejtek, Martin Smolka) | Performance | Black Box | 40 | Czech | | 0 | 1-10 | Jiří Adámek, Michal Nejtek, Martin Smolka | | | | | Jiri Adamek | Ivana Kanhäuserova | | | | | | | | 18-May-2013 | Czech Republic | Prague | Alfred ve dvoře theatre | 85 | Jedefrau.org | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 252 | Medúlla | | You won’t understand what’s happening: you will feel what’s happening. (S. Minailo – stage director) // Medúlla is an intergenerational opera inspired by Björk’s album. In 2004, the Icelandic singer brought out Medúlla, a record that sought – in reaction to 9/11 – the “core” (medulla) of humanity that we all share. In La Monnaie’s project Medúlla, a ritual takes place onstage that touches the essence of humanity in the universal language of music. Featuring children choir of 100 young singers (between 6 and 17), traditional throat singing, 4 solo singers over 55, live electronics and percussion, Medúlla explores all the possibilities of the human voice. The children are the starting point and in the imaginary society on the stage, the generation of working people (between 18 and 55) is missing on the stage. So the relations between the 2 groups are oriented towards mutual exchanges. Each group can learn from the other. There is a story, but there is no plot. Medúlla can be seen as choreography of the singers, performance, visual and sound experience. There is always a sense of a story but it’s more about music and sensation/perception. The aim is that the audience can start to see the music, listening with its eyes instead of only with its ears. In this sense, the music is the engine that moves everything. Because of the audience’s disposition in the hall (around the stage and very close to the artists), Medúlla creates a ritualistic space in which every body feels free to become a part of the community. In her score, Anat Spiegel weaves the new arrangements of the songs by Björk and the new compositions. Repetition is a fundamental principle in music and it’s deeply explored in the score, in order to create the ritualistic dimension of the performance. In that way, the source material can grow and explore new territories. With this work, the artistic team opens a very new musical horizon for the young generations: an opera inspired by an album of one of the most recognized stars in the world, sung by people who are not (yet) stars and supported by new vocal and electronic arrangements. Medúlla is a very contemporary opera and offers a new vocal and visual experience to a large audience (both young and old people). Everybody can hear and see a personal representation of the society and its values, link its personal story to a tradition, build its own fiction and develop its reflection on our continuously changing world. It’s all about drama told by music. | Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie Bruxelles (Björk) | Opera | Black Box | 76 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Björk Guðmundsdóttir, Anat Spiegel | Bassem Akiki | Denis Menier (Children's Choir), Benoît Giaux (Youth Chorus) | Björk Guðmundsdóttir | | Sjaron Minailo | Henrik Vibskov | Henrik Vibskov | Krystian Lada | | | Maarten Warmerdam | Henry Vega | | 4-Feb-2015 | Belgium | Brussels | Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie | 190 | La Monnaie - De Munt | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Vokalartisten |
| 253 | La haine de la musique (Loathing Music) | | "Loathing of music" is a scenic monodrama for one actor, ten musicians and electronics, on the essay by the French writer Pascal QUIGNARD. The monodrama is fully based on QUIGNARD’s essay, a particularly powerful text on the perception of music, on music as a media for submission and on the fascination it can provoke. During "Loathing of music" a man on stage tells us his personal and singular visions on sound and on music. He talks about the sense of sounds and the unsuspected power of music. Over all things, he talks about the history of man - our own history - built-up through the strength of musical symbols and allegories: Apollo coming down from the Olympus with a lyre on his back, killing a whole army with the sole power of his musical instrument. Ulyses being attached to the mast of his vessel, surviving after being the first man who listened to the chant of the sirens. Jan de l’Ors finally touching the ground after three days descending through the obscurity of a well, reaching the horror of the kingdom of silence. Men during the Palaeolithic era exploring in the deep darkness resonating caves to visually represent the echo of sound through their paintings. Or, much closer to us, prisoners in a concentration camp walking to the chambers, accompanied by the sound of music … Ignoring our own skin, music pierces us, reaching us at any moment and in any situation. We are perfectly unable to defend ourselves from sound as our ears don’t have any eyelids: that is the nature and the power of music ; that is the way it can be used to influence our own history. The hate of music is structured in five different parts, an introduction and an epilogue are the structural frame to three different parts or tableaux. Each of them presents different sections that are characterized by there own visual scenography through lights and videos. During the monodrama, the actor will gradually approach the musicians that perform in the back of the scene. Different obstacles separate him from them. Their performance, the sounds they are producing threaten the actor ... and threaten the public himself. Music acts like a fisherman’s hook, she attracts us, she permanently fascinates us through its strong power of seduction. But through her power, she can also be leading us to death. We must then abandon ourselves to her, travelling through the sea of sound as Ulyses did : it may be the only way to listen what no other man on earth heard before us, without dying. | Daniel D'Adamo, TM+ | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 75 | French | | 0 | 11-20 | Daniel D'Adamo | Laurent Cuniot | | | Pascal Quignard | Christian Gangneron | | Elisa Provins | | | Nicolas Maisse | Jean Tartaroli | | | 9-Oct-2014 | France | Strasbourg | Cité de la musique et de la danse | 250 | TM+, Festival Musica, Maison de la musique de Nanterre | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 254 | The Oldest Woman in Limerick | | We were commissioned to write an opera for the Limerick City of Culture. We decided to see if we could find the oldest woman in the city and create a work about our investigation and also about the story of the oldest woman. We started slowly asking a local butcher who sent us to his grandmother who insisted she wasn't old at all, only 83, so she sent us to her sister and so on and soon. We met lots of people and they told us stories of their mothers and daughter and sister; we learnt Lithuianian proverbs and we saved a butterfly in a cafe and eventually we found Sister Anthony who was 104 years old and she told her her life story. About growing up in Ireland in the 1920s and about her 60 years spent in Italy as a nun. We took all research and we built a show. Some written before. Some in the rehearsal room. We cast 4 sopranos and a mezzo. They would be our narrators, hosts, actors and singers. They would work as an ensemble. We built a set out of our research: the interviews, the papers, the maps and books. We invited the people we had meet to join us on stage as part of a choir and we invited children on stage to draw pictures of the oldest women they knew. We brought all this material together and performed for the people of Limerick. Sister Anthony couldn't make it. She was too frail but lots of other people we had spoken to did. Sister Anthony passed away some weeks later but there is now a new oldest woman in Limerick and we plan to find her too next time we perform the show. | Lime Tree Theatre Limerick, Wide Open Opera | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 75 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Brian Irvine | Killian Farrell | | John Mcilduff | | John Mcilduff | Ciaran O’Melia | Clodagh Deegan | | | | Ciaran O’Melia | | Maria Larkin (Researcher) | 12-Dec-2014 | Ireland | Limerick | Lime Tree Theatre | 500 | Wide Open Opera, Dumbworld, Lime Tree Theatre/Limerick City of Culture | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 255 | Things We Throw Away | | We were commissioned by Dublin City Council to create 5 short street operas inspired by life on the streets of Dublin. So for a couple of weeks we hung around the street watching and talking to people and exploring the street architecture. We came up with five very different snapshots of city life: a group of smokers outside an office building, a woman selling bananas, a father and son out for drink, and ironing board left out as junk on the street and a pair of old woman slowly chasing after a husband who has been unfaithful. Once composed the music was recored by the RTE Concert Orchestra and during the productions on the street we used a system of playback with the singers performing live (except the ironing board which we recorded). The five pieces where performed as a block throughout Dublin. Each would appear from the reality of the city street and then fade back into it. | Dublin City Council, Wide Open Opera | Opera | Site Specific, Public Space, Moving Audience | 50 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Brian Irvine | | | John Mcilduff | | John Mcilduff | | | | | | | | | 4-Jul-2014 | Ireland | Dublin | General Post Office, Smithfield Square, Mountjoy Square, Dame Court, New Market Square | 300 | Wide Open Opera, Dumbworld, Dublin City Council | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 256 | Az Élő Fény (The Living Light) | | Soharóza, a group of 25 singers led by their conductor, Dóra Halas, decided some years ago to dedicate their time and collective creativity to a 12th-century woman, outstanding in both her nature and her works. Small working groups were formed, who did research on different aspects of her life: her music and painting, her healings and visions, Lingua Ignota – her imaginary language, her leadership of the convent and her personality. After a year of research and discussion, the results were taken to the choir rehearsals and musical work began with the singers. Based on the text and melody of one of Hildegard’s greatest works, Ordo Virtutum, a morality play, the singers began to improvise and collect musical games together. In the meantime, each Virtue was given her solo part and the task of composing an idea for the special atmosphere she wishes to create in her scene. As a result, each Virtue scene resembles the soloist’s personality combined with the features of the Virtue itself. The choir invited Anikó Fekete, a theatre pedagogist, to help with the movements and the dramaturgy. A member of the choir, Ákos Lokody, was working in the background on sound design to be implemented into the musical material at some points. The final phase was to put the scenes – or impressions – together with Ákos Kiss, a VJ and light technician. He and his colleagues decided to build a “brain” or “diamond” – as members of the audience called it –, onto which he could project different kind of visuals to aid the atmosphere of each scene. The result of the two years’ work was an abstract polyphonic choral piece based on Hildegard’s plainchants and elements of her life, performed as a kind of theatre or opera, backed with movement, electronics and visual effects. In the performance, the choir plays with natural acoustics and amplification, weaving sound experiments into the plot and text of the morality play written and composed by the abbess herself. The thoughts behind the original theme were reconsidered to find a link to our world and living of now. Soharóza is now working on revising the performance – especially part one. The creators wish to arrive at a more abstract level, including a moderator as the voice of the “Soul Factory”, so as to aid the understanding of the modern plot and to improve dramaturgy of the whole piece. The new version will be performed at the EUROPA CANTAT XIX Pécs 2015 international choir festival in Hungary on 31 July 2015. | Soharóza | Performance | Black Box | 60 | English, Latin, others | | 0 | > 20 | | Dóra Halas | Dóra Halas | | | | Ákos Kiss, Eszter Dávida, Zoltán Vajda | Szaffi Asbóth | Anikó Fekete | Anikó Fekete | | | András Kiss, Ákos Lokoday | Dóra Halas (Concept), Fanni Eckhardt (Arrangement / Score) | 21-Feb-2015 | Hungary | Budapest | Bakelit Multi Art Center | 200 | Soharóza | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance, Gesang |
| 257 | AUDIOKAUKAS | Garso vaidinimas (Audio Play) | The audio performance “Audiokaukas” by Arturas Bumšteinas, a young Lithuanian composer (b. 1982) was inspired by books published by Eridanas Publishers in the Science Fiction Gold Fund Series and the programme “Videokaukas” broadcast on Lithuanian TV in 1990. The author of the performance devoted several years to the reading of books from the series and watched the films demonstrated in the programme “Videokaukas”. He drew the inspiration for the script from over more than a hundred books read and films watched. The script of the “Audiokaukas” is a peculiar concentrate of fantasy literature in the form of a story combined by collage. It is an episode of several days and nights in the life of a young talented chef, Denisas. At the beginning the protagonist’s everyday life is depicted in fragments his extrovert, hedonistic character (Denisas = Gr. Dionysos). The defining moment in the story is when Denisas, cooking one of his dishes, suffered food poisoning caused by false morel (Lat. Gyromitra esculenta). Further on in the story, the effects of poisoning do not appear at once; they are slowly disclosed to the audience. Reading a science fantasy book Denisas unawares finds himself in the world described in the text and experiences events depicted there. He is awakened from his hallucinatory trip by a telephone call. The anchor of a radio talk show invites Denisas to take part in it. He agrees and brings to the live broadcast a collage made up of extracts from a hundred science fiction books, which he introduces as his cookery book that he has being writing lately. He reads extracts from his “book” and is transferred again to the world of hallucinations, this time with all the radio talk show listeners. These “transportations to the fantasy world” are descriptions of various creatures and their interactions with the protagonist woven from small text extracts by the composer Arturas Bumšteinas. Denisas’ cookery book text touches upon the subject of consumerism and aggressive exploitation of different forms of life. Another “Audiokaukas” personage, Denisas’ antagonist, is the composer Apolonijus Polonskis whose voice over the radio accompanies the protagonist throughout the performance. Polonskis is an acousmatic creature without a physical body that flourishes in acoustic space; its voice is accompanied all the time chamber music allegedly written by Polonskis (Bumšteinas composed it according to the descriptions of sounds from the fantasy books). // Audio play AUDIOKAUKAS was presented in the dark (black-box venue) accompanied with subtle lighting (reminiscent of the starry sky). Spectators were experiencing performance in comfortable armchairs while AUDIOKAUKAS was broadcasted in surround sound. Video material it is a compilation of sound and some photos taken during and after the show. | Arturas Bumšteinas, OPEROMANIJA | Performance | Black Box | 111 | Lithuanian | | 0 | 0 | Arturas Bumšteinas | | | | | | | | | | | Julius Kuršys | Ramūnas Jasutis (Recordings), Ignas Juzokas (Performance) | | 15-Apr-2015 | Lithuania | Vilnius | Black Hall, Arts Printing House | 100 | OPEROMANIJA | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now |
| 258 | The Enchanted Organ: A Porn Opera | | "The Enchanted Organ" is a burlesque opera that celebrates sexuality and satirizes the porn industry, while parodying four hundred years of the operatic tradition. Composer/librettist team Gordon Beeferman and Charlotte Jackson bring wit and polymorphous perversity to this journey through "the Magical Kingdom of Porn," a place where past and present, straight and queer, and dead and living converge. Drawing on influences as diverse as classic 70s porn soundtracks, baroque oratorio, Ancient Greek hymns, and the Nutcracker ballet, this work-in-progress is as close as you'll get (or want to get!) to "aural sex." “The Enchanted Organ” mingles gritty reality with surreal fantasy, aiming to entertain while also wryly commenting on itself. The musical idiom stretches beyond "classical music" to incorporate the sounds and rhythms of its subjects’ worlds. Bridging the gap between “high” art and “low,” we puncture the turgid balloon of “traditional” opera and revivify the flaccid clichés of porn. Plot-wise, a quasi-realistic narrative frames a series of set pieces and vignettes set in a fantasy world. A naïve Midwestern boy arrives in Pornopolis with a battered suitcase and a dream to be the biggest porn superstar ever. He encounters both allies and adversaries, including an aspiring lesbian porn director; an all-knowing drag queen, Lady Honeysuckle; and aging German porn great Helmut Langeschlange. When our hero mysteriously becomes impotent, Lady Honeysuckle intervenes, escorting him on an enlightening quest through the magical land of porn. He witnesses many surreal spectacles, including a Baroque Oratorio in which the Vagina and the Anus vie for the favors of the Penis; a march of female ex-porn star zombies; a Greek chorus of fluffers; and porn legends long-dead of AIDS. Finally, in possession of the Enchanted Organ, a magical (and musical) talisman, our hero returns and launches his career with a legendary “performance.” // This is the video of the workshop performance of Act One, June 2012, Dixon Place, New York. We have made some cuts and revisions since that time. The full two-act opera is now complete. | Gordon Beeferman | Opera | Black Box | 120 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Gordon Beeferman | | | Charlotte Jackson | | | | | | | | | | | 22-Jun-2012 | USA | New York | Dixon Place | 110 | Gordon Beeferman, Charlotte Jackson | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 259 | Носферату (Nosferatu) | | "Nosferatu"opera was written for Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre by modern Russian composer Dmitri Kourliandski. It was premiered in Perm during annual Diaghilev Festival 2014 and afterwards was nominated for the Golden Mask Award, the main national theatrical award. It took three years in order to bring D.KOurliandski workpiece to the stage. “Nosferatu” is an opera about one of the most notorious antiheroes in the European culture, who has been long popularized in literature and films. In addition to being an original poetic text, the libretto uses a great many factual enumerations, such as lists of items related to human anatomy, to components of human blood, as well as lists of ailments, of poisonous and medicinal plants and herbs, and of many other things. The human circulatory system turns into a symbolical labyrinth.The opera “Nosferatu” is an attempt to immerse into the human organism, to reflect the sounds and images produced inside the body. The action of the opera actually takes place entirely inside Nosferatu, and all of its characters are products of his inner world. That world constantly regenerates and reconstructs itself, showing how desperate human civilization is. From the standpoint of music, the idea of immersion into the human organism is realized not so much through naturalistic means, but rather through an attempt to recreate the rhythmic and acoustic aura of a functioning organism in the structure of the musical score and in the very material of the sounds.As an opera, “Nosferatu” is not typical, be it in form, in substance, or in its comprising elements. It is a modern performance that balances the poetic word with music, theatre, and plastic arts, while treating all these elements as a single and indivisible domain. The vocalists, the actors, and the chorus are at all times present on an empty stage, the perimeter of which is dominated by an installation designed by Yannis Kounellis. | Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre | Performance | Proscenium Stage | 120 | Russian | | 0 | > 20 | Dmitri Kurliandski | Teodor Kurentzis | | Dimitris Yalamas | | Teodoros Terzopoulos | Yanis Cunelis | Luchia | | | | | | | 13-Jun-2014 | Ruassia | Perm | Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre | 845 | P.I.Tchaikovsky Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre, Stella Art Foundation | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 260 | Franziskus | | Sergej Newskis Franziskus has been premiered in 2012 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Franziskus is written for narrator, high male voice, soprano, eight soloists and chamber orchestra. The libretto consists of four scenes and is based on a text by Claudius Lü nstedt, which has been written exclusively for this project. The plot describes the holy life out of the perspective of Saint Francis in four pictures: conversion, dialogue with the biological brother, doubt and death. The main sources are two biographies of Saint Francis companion Thomas von Celano. In the text of Lü nstedt Saint Francis appears as a complex character full of contradictions. It is not about a glorified saint’s image but a very well-drawn psychological portrait based on biographical research. The main character of Franziskus is represented by two actors: on the one hand a rather dry, partly ironic, partly expressive voice of a speaker, on the other hand a counter-tenor, who occurs in the most important scenes and moments of simultaneous narration. Overall, the text is allocated in equal parts a half to the speaker and the singer. The inconstancy and expressivity of the main character is compared with a more static environment which does not mean that the music has mainly "oratorical" character. It rather creates a space in which the voice of the protagonist (and the associated scenic component) can develop. The soloists play the role of the disciple as well as the choir and the people and become particularly active in the 4th scene, where they also act partly as individuals. The percussion apparatus is a very important part of all four scenes: Four evenly dispersed players use elemental material such as stones, wood and iron besides conventional instruments to change the atmosphere of the entire room. By using these elemental materials as body of sounds the bridge between the Franciscan order of the poverty and simplicity and aesthetics of the Italian Arte Povera is struck. Newskis opera Franziskus has been nominated in four categories for the Russian national theater prize "Golden Mask" and has been awarded the Special Jury Prize in the category Music Theatre. | Bolshoi Theatre Moscow (Sergej Newski) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 60 | Russian (German version also available) | | 0 | > 20 | Sergej Newski | Philipp Chizhevsky | | Claudius Lünstedt | | Vladimir Bocharov | Victor Shilkrot | | | | | Sergei Shevchenko | | | 12-Sep-2012 | Russia | Moskow | Bolshoi Theatre | 1800 | Produktionsgesellschaft Operagruppa | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 261 | As Big As The Sky | | In China you can dream. Cities are being built at a stroke, and fantastical ideas turning into concrete and steel. But when dreams can become reality, be careful what you dream. As Big As The Sky is a new opera by Arnoud Noordegraaf (composer, director), Adrian Hornsby (libretto, screenplay) and Ai Weiwei (set design, film). Inspired by the rise of China, it confronts the astonishing wave of development currently sweeping across the country, and the dramatic collisions this creates between traditional culture and globalizing forces, and between a once European world and a freshly Chinese future. Set in a remote Chinese village, the opera centres around Sem Aers, a European architect commissioned to build a utopic megastructure there, and Qin Mulan, a celebrity singer of Chinese opera who is set to perform in the completed building. Sem falls in love with her song, and the pair embark upon an intoxicating romance. However beneath the layers of stage make-up, Mulan is a canny modern woman with strong business instincts, and an understanding of the project’s true value as a tourist attraction. These themes throw up a series of unique musical collisions — notably between traditional Kunqu opera and Wagnerian late Romanticism, both employed in a contemporary idiom. Variously quoting, morphing and contrasting different styles, Noordegraaf conjures a rich musical palette of colours and rhythms: variously ironic, humourous, moving, and very now. A bold stage design from China’s foremost artist, Ai Weiwei, plays an integral role in the piece. Video footgage shot by flying drones communicates the changing landscapes of contemporary China, and at key moments in the opera, these flow over a giant hanging three dimensional artwork, which itself slowly rotates to express the inversion of heaven and earth. The libretto is by Adrian Hornsby, also co-author of an award-winning 800-page book on China, and consequently the research is unusually detailed, and the story both compelling and sophisticated. Noordegraaf and Hornsby previously collaborated on the music theatre productions A.M. and Urwald. As Big As The Sky is a remarkably ambitious modern opera — at once a penetrating comment on some of the most vital themes of the 21st century, and, in the great tradition of dramatic art, a passionate story of doomed love. The world premiere was on 11 June 2015 at the Holland Festiva | Holland Festival (Arnoud Noordegraaf, Adrian Hornsby, Ai Weiwei) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 114 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Arnoud Noordegraaf | Bas Wiegers | | Adrian Hornsby | | Arnoud Noordegraaf | Ai Weiwei | Merel van ’t Hullenaar i.c.w. Niels Vis | | | Arnoud Noordegraaf, Ai Weiwei | | | | 11-Jun-2015 | Netherlands | Amsterdam | Holland Festival | 725 | Barooni, Asko∣Schönberg, Holland Festival | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Videokunst |
| 262 | Le Roi Mikado (King Mikado) | | « King Mikado » is an Opera for 2 solo singers (one mezzo-soprano and one baritone), 3 instrumentists, and mixed choir. The book and the music are from Pascale Lazarus. It was first played in an unfinished version as a pocket opera of 23 minutes in 2012. In the complete version a second part has been added : « Mikado's dream » and the end has been set to music. The current version is 50 minutes long. This projet was supported by the Grenoble Conservatory and was programmed in the conservatory professional concert season on May 22, 2015. For further information on my inspiration and on the screenplay please consult the synopsis and the book attached. | Pascale Lazarus | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 50 | French | | 0 | > 20 | Pascale Lazarus | Maud Hamon-Loisance | | | | Anthony Gambin | | | | | | | | | 22-May-2014 | France | Grenoble | Théatre Prémol | 150 | City of Grenoble/Grenoble Conservatory | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 263 | Dress Code: Opera | Nanoopera | The plot of this nanoopera deals with the traditional opera, its rituals, aesthetic and ethical traditions. The opera analyses one of the rituals practiced by men, who are going to the opera. Here the nano-issue of the relationship between outer and inner beauty in the opera dress code that society requires from men is asked. The spectators should understand the title “Dress Code: Opera” in the direct sense and before getting dressed they should experience the idea encoded in the opera that they should be properly/suitably/in an opera-like way/smartly dressed. // Premiere 19 December 2012, Black Hall, Arts printing House, 5th contemporary opera festival NOA (New Opera Action). 5th NOA Festival was dedicated to nanooperas. Whole set of short opera performances was presented in its frames. 5th festival’s edition was accompanied with nanoopera manifesto, created by NOA artists. Instructions for spectators We suggest you come smartly dressed to feel better. Every man wearing a costume feels manlier than he really is, and every woman in high heels can look down and see more. | Justas Tertelis & Rita Mačiliūnaitė, OPEROMANIJA | Opera | Black Box | 160 | Lithuanian | | 0 | 1-10 | Rita Mačiliūnaitė | | | Rita Mačiliūnaitė, Justas Tertelis | | Justas Tertelis | | | | | | Julius Kuršys | Dalius Lapinskas | Justas Tertelis, Rita Mačiliūnaitė (Idea) | 19-Dec-2012 | Lithuania | Vilnius | Black Hall, Arts Printing House | 203 | OPEROMANIJA | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 264 | The Temptation of St Antony | | The Temptation of St Antony is a multimedia ballet-chante, scored for six physical actors, six orchestral musicians and a heap of outdated technological equipment. This operatic adaptation of Flaubert’s unstageable play, premiered in a labyrinthine warehouse in downtown Los Angeles to critical acclaim in early 2015. The LOS ANGELES TIMES heralded this “seriously imaginative, theologically post-apocalyptic, gravely yet wondrously immersive new show” as a ‘Critic’s Pick’ at “the intersection of theater, music, visual art and dance.” Flaubert’s play, a psychedelic history of religious thought, was described by Foucault as a ‘fantasia of the library.’ Flaubert, a notoriously compulsive perfectionist, labored over the text for twenty-five years, emulating the discipline of his hermetic protagonist. It is considered a heavily coded autobiography, incorporating his personal traumas and obsessions, his anxieties about advancing technology, and his equal disdain and admiration for religious practice. Four Larks experimental adaptation blurs the boundary between author and subject, creating an “eerily musicalized allegory of the frenzied imagination in the throes of creation.” The central character is deliberately undefined. We see him seated at a typewriter, repeatedly chronicling a phantasmagoric night in the life of disillusioned St Antony. He writes in the third person, but responds to the narrative in the first. As Antony’s visions become increasingly immersive, he is absorbed into the action, but maintains a critical distance. The musical and visual aesthetic further complicates this instability, juxtaposing Antony’s 3rd Century Egypt and Flaubert’s industrial age Europe, with contemporary equipment and technology. Flaubert’s original text similarly spirals through space and time as Antony navigates an intertextual maze tracing humankind's’ endlessly evolving struggle to articulate the indefinable. This metatheatrical adaptation captures the ecstatic liminality of Flaubert’s unstageable play through a postmodern lens. | Four Larks | Opera | Black Box | 70 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Mat Diafos Sweeney, Ellen Warkentine | | | Jesse Rasmussen | Gustave Flaubert | | Sebastian Peters-Lazaro, Regan Baumgarden | | | Sebastian Peters-Lazaro | | Brandon Baruch | Danny Echevarria | | 13-Feb-2015 | USA | | | 89 | Four Larks | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 265 | City Lives | Music theatre for 4 voices, ensemble, video, and electronic soundtrack | City Lives is an intriguing and evergreen contemporary music theatre, which tries to deconstruct the every day life into subtle layers via which man connects and communicates by shaping different networks. “City Lives” received its world premiere in May 2014 by the Ergon Ensemble in the Athens Concert Hall. // The city is more than meets the eye: the buildings, the streets, the sidewalks, the parks, the town squares or its people. It is the relationships which, like a giant spider’s web, connect all the pieces of one chaotic puzzle. We are no mere physical entities. Our life no longer depends on our physical presence. Instead, we are multiple entities, veils, levels or concentric spheres that orbit within one another simultaneously. Our every activity, be it physical or mental, is one such sphere by which we are surrounded in the natural or virtual environment. Communication and communion with the equivalent spheres of other people connects and intergrates us in a different network each time, forming atypical groups, subcultures or networks. The urban space expands through its narrow geographical definition, taking in turn the form of the concentric circles: from our esoteric self to the vast social groups. We are multiple beings of different textures and composition that live many concurrent lives, whether overt or secret, esoteric or public. Together they form the totality of who we really are. Through this performance I try to approach every kind of ‘life’ as I imagine it to be. I want to deconstruct those different layers, focussing on the point of view not so much of the different sides of life in a city (City Life) but on the different lives created or formed by such defining factors as communication, money, the Media, religion, culture as well as our ideas and belief systems. (Street Life, Social Life, Media Life, Money Life, Inner Life, After Life etc.). // There are two options for the production of the work: 1. New production: Score & Video by the composer; The organizer or the venue engage a local contemporary ensemble, singers, conductor, director, set designer, etc. / 2. Premiere production: Score & Video by the composer; Ergon Ensemble, singers, conductor, set designer, etc. travel from Athens. | Alexandros Mouzas | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 80 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Alexandros Mouzas | Andreas Tselikas | | Alexandros Mouzas | | | | Giorgos Segredakis | | | Vickey Betsou | Sakis Birbilis | | Alexandros Mouzas (Artistic director), Alexia Othonaiou (Illustrations) | 9-May-2014 | Greece | Athens | Megaron - The Athens Concert Hall | 1000 | Anax-Cultural projects | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Videokunst |
| 266 | As The Moon Arrives On The Water... | | "Sejong Camerata" is a cooperation workshop, held by the Seoul Metropolitan Opera. Under the lead of its Director, Geon-Yong Lee, it allows young, talented, and ambitious composers and authors to collaborate in opera projects, that are "creative, original, authentic, Korean and global". In 2013 it has brought to live four different works, that entered a "reading performance" competition. "As The Moon Arrives On The Water..." by composer UZong Choe and author Yeon-Ock Ko, was finally chosen to be staged as a full opera production in 2014. // "As The Moon Arrives On The Water..." tells the story of tragic entanglement between Kyeongja and Sunam. The question that lays beneath is about the nature of human relationships, the meaning of love, life and mutual understanding. The protagonist Sunam, a cargo truck driver, meets the much younger Kyeongja, who offers her services at a bar-like establishment. They get to know each other and finally, while expecting a child, decide to get married. The tragedy approaches with the interference of Kyeongja's step-family, which leads to a double homicide. Sunam is charged for murder, which he did not commit, and during the investigations, facts come to light, that shed new light on the characters and on the event itself. "Do you know my heart? Have you seen it?" "A Man and a woman meet. That is for sure." "Man and woman meet as the moon arrives on the waters." "You chose him for a reason..." "Think, thinking..." These short lines are presented in the beginning of the play and are repraised several times. "What is your heart telling you? What’s seen and what’s not ... Veiled by thoughts, veiled by thoughts... ... as the moon arrives on the waters" Still, even the last lines leave the audience with a sense of knowledge, but without an answer. | Seoul Metropolitan Opera | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 100 | Chinese | | 0 | > 20 | Uzong Choe | Hogen Yun | | Yeon Ock Ko | | Rieko Saito | Sang Bong Park | | Hongyie Lee | | | In Gon Cho | | Geon Yong Lee (General director) | 20-Nov-2014 | South Korea | Seoul | Sejong Center (Seoul Metropolitan Opera) | 609 | Sejong Center (Seoul Metropolitan Opera) | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 267 | Czarodziejska góra (The Magic Mountain) | | The opera is the work of four artists: the composer Paweł Mykietyn, the playwright Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk, the visual artist Mirosław Bałka as well as the actor and director Andrzej Chyra. The libretto has been based on the novel by Thomas Mann written in 1924, describing the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual coming of age of Hans Castorp at the Berghof sanatorium in Davos. The interpretation of the Polish artists ascribes the key role to the American, who is mentioned by Mann only at the beginning of the book in one sentence. We find out that the woman dies before Hans arrives, and he takes her room. In the opera, the figure of the American functions as a filter through which we look at the story. Her presence blurs the boarders between life and death and makes The Magic Mountain, as the director puts it: “a story about growing up to death”. This fluidity of boarders is also highlighted by the stage design. In the first act we have an ascetic, vertical structure - an installation which brings to mind ancient pyramids in cross-section. In the second act the installation is laid down - a horizontal labyrinth is created, which communicates the helplessness of the characters and their directionless state. The whole of the opera has an electronic form and it is constructed on contrasts. It combines electronic music, references to pop and classical music (deformed polyphony), microtonality and natural sounds (for example a passing train, slamming of doors). The composer was especially interested in the relativity of time – a very important theme in Thomas Mann’s novel itself – the way it “slows down” and “speeds up” (rather than lasting as long as the last one, each subsequent quarter note may be slightly slower). This has the effect of overlapping and mixing of layers, but also of pausing. Each element has its beginning, but then everything starts to blur and at some point the audience loses track of time. This mathematical score is animated by more emotional parts, as well as the physical presence of the singers, who, although they have to perform precisely to the played music, were given a lot of freedom by the composer. The opera has been recorded in a modern studio. The 8-channel recoding system rendered the sound all-embracing. The music surrounds the audience from all directions - one can sit in its midst and enjoy the sound in its fullness. According to Polish reviewers The Magic Mountain is an “opera for the new century”. | Malta Festival Poznań (Paweł Mykietyn, Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk, Mirosław Bałka, Andrzej Chyra) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 126 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Pawel Mykietyn | Adam Banaszak | | Malgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk | Thomas Mann | Andrzej Chyra | Miroslaw Balka | Magdalena Maciejewska | | Maria Stoklosa | Mikolaj Szymkowiak | Bartosz Nalazek | Ewa Guziolek-Tubylewicz | Małgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk, Andrzej Chyra (Libretto concept), Rafał Smolen, Filip Krzyzykowski (Music recording) | 26-Jun-2015 | Poland | Poznań | Malta Festival | 410 | Malta Festival Poznań | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 268 | Project Solaris | Site Specific Music Theater and Installations | Project Solaris is a visual and musical location performance, based on the novel Solaris (1961) by Stanislav Lem. It interlaces visual arts, cinema, music and theatre. Every audience member is handed out an iPod with video and a voice-over. The audience is invited to follow main character Chris Kelvin who is presenting herself on video. The video serves as a guide, and shows the same route as the audience is about to walk. Because this love story plays out in both video and the actual surroundings, the audience will walk through several versions of reality. The live performance and music, as well as the images and sound on the iPod, intertwine. It’s up to the spectators mind to combine both. A magical, visual spectacle unfolds between reality and illusion. What is real; The images on the iPod or the things they see before their own eyes? De Jong and De Witte increasingly question reality and play with the perception of the audience, until nothing is what it seems. The Quantum Mechanics is a physical theory, describing the behavior of matter and energy on a sub atomic scale. This theory talks about ‘parallel worlds’, being able to cross our reality, explaining that matter on a molecular level, does not crash with matter from the invisible world. Also 90 % of our body is constructed out of these ‘invisible building blocks of the spirit’. It can become a very real thought that our ‘being’ is not only present in our own reality, but can at the same time be present in many different levels and kinds of reality. Based on the story of Solaris, we try to reveal and question this invisible and undetectable parallel world. A world in which everything that has ever happened might still be happening, and exist. With the theory of the Quantum Mechanics we try to clarify the phenomenons of Solaris: the sudden appearance of Chris Kelvins ex-lover, who died many years ago by suicide. The experiments of Chris Kelvin and her team, actually do not show her any new world. The only thing they reveal is the reflection of her own unconsciousness. We all know the immense force of being attracted to the unknown, with the idea to leave it all behind. But no mater how far we travel, in everything we do, think or create, it always is unknown in ourselves that we however get in touch with. | Hanneke de Jong & Jonas de Witte | Performance | Site Specific, Public Space, Moving Audience, Audience Participation | 55 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Rinus Aarts, Miguel Boelens, Hanneke de Jong | | | Hanneke de Jong | Stanislav Lem | | Hester Jolink | Ingrid Govers | Cecile Brommer | | Jonas de Witte | | Rinus Aarts | Hanneke de Jong, Jonas de Witte (Artistic directors) | 15-May-2014 | Netherlands | Vorden | De Tuin der Lusten | 200 | Hanneke de Jong & Jonas de Witte | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst |
| 269 | Physiological songs | | Physiological songs could be described as a post-dramatic multimedia music theater for voice and biofeedback. The body of the singer is the core of the piece: her somatic and electrophysiological activity generate dialogues between her brain, heart, voice and extremities. An attempt to put on stage the inner sounds of the body, where text, space, time, body and multimedia interact to achieve a unique audiovisual experience. | Reactive ensemble | Performance | Black Box | 10 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Remmy Canedo | | | | | Remmy Canedo | | Annette Wolf | | | Huihui Cheng, Juan Camilo Vasquez | | | | 5-Jun-2014 | Germany | Stuttgart | Lost & Found Kongress für Stimmkunst und neues Musiktheater | 500 | Reactive ensemble | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 270 | STEAM. The Fantasymusical | | "STEAM. The Fantasymusical" is a steampunk inspired musical written and produced by professionals for the amateur musical company "Musical Projekt Neunkirchen" in the german city of Neunkirchen. Its the 8th originally composed musical since 2003 and with more than a hundred people, playing or working on and around the stage, it is extraordinary in its form in Germany. // Synopsis: What would this world look like if it took another path in a last moment in time? This world is out of joint: In the kingdom of "Imorta", Queen Esteam has reigned for hundreds of years surrounded by her chosen ministers and her Court - a grotesque victorian system of greed, control addiction and the quest for immortality, even if worn out body-parts must be replaced with prostheses. The "common people" of the "Aqua-Town" consists of mechanics and steam creators - a frugal and contented society where thinking and independent actions are removed by the gracious dictatorship. The job of the workers is to always provide the rulers with new prostheses and especially with STEAM: the steam which the inhabitants of „Imorta“ need to gain and preserve their immortality. Another part of the world has almost been forgotten in this system: "Aetherna", the realm of the nature spirits. They critically observe as people in „Aqua-Town“ and „Imorta“ will lose more and more of their humanity - and decide to intervene... And suddenly people break out of the prison of their minds which had been controlled by Imorta ! All at once a new spark of being starts to glow in a dehumanised world! And for the first time, the question arises whether immortality really is the key to perfection ... Inspired by „Steampunk“ and the anthroposophic world of Rudolf Steiner, composer and author Francesco Cottone, composer Amby Schillo and author Ellen Kärcher wrote this thrilling fantasy musical whose enigmatic story is located not too far from our real world. | Musical Projekt Neunkirchen (Francesco Cottone, Amby Schillo, Ellen Kärcher) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 150 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Francesco Cottone, Amby Schillo | Francesco Cottone, Amby Schillo | | Francesco Cottone, Ellen Kärcher | | Ellen Kärcher | Francesco Cottone, Ellen Kärcher | | Jan Schuba | Ellen Kärcher | | | | | 9-May-2014 | Germany | Neunkirchen | Musicalpalast | 580 | Kreisstadt Neunkirchen | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 271 | M'dea Undone | | Dora Award-winning writer Marjorie Chan’s gripping recreation of the classic is brought to life by the lush orchestral and electronic soundscape of Scottish composer John Harris. The modern unravelling of mythology’s most controversial heroine was set against the stunning industrial backdrop of Toronto’s reclaimed brick factory. // Synopsis: Jason, an army captain and now war-hero, is returning home after years of war and an uncertain future. His interpreter and lover, M’dea, and their son Chase accompany him to a new life in the West. Jason begins a political career, working alongside the President and Dahlia, the President’s beautiful young daughter. Having betrayed her village to help him, M’dea rages as Jason distances his family from his new political life, taking Dahlia as his wife. When Dahlia is murdered in cold blood on the precipice of victory, M’dea’s struggle for survival and revenge begins a rapid spiral towards the opera’s searing, tragic finale. M’dea Undone is a passionate and daring interrogation of power, influence, and identity in the twenty-first century. | Tapestry Opera | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 75 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | John Harris | Jordan de Souza | | Marjorie Chan | | Tim Albery | Michelle Tracey | Michelle Tracey | | | | Jason Hand | | | 26-May-2015 | Canada | Toronto | Evergreen Brick Works | 252 | Tapestry Opera; Scottish Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 272 | Tap:Ex Tables Turned | | The Criterion Collection and La Callas Fantasie are glitch-based pieces that delve into the worlds of certain icons that have made a marked impact on my aesthetic. Each work is constructed around damaged and deconstructed audio and video woven together to creat a sonic landscape over which accompnaying instrumental material -- itself emulating the traits of broken or malfunctioning media -- is performed live. The source material is treated as a musical instrument; as part of the ensemble. It is a very specific colour or timbre -- akin to a violin or any member of the orchestra -- that has its own distinctive sound or appearance. I want to capture that sound and -- like I would any other instrument -- notate for it and integrate it into a chamber work. The relationship between the live performer and the icon is central to the aesthetic. The living perfomrer interacts with the lost, forgotten or even dead icon, simultaneously breathing new life and emotion into the characters while bending, stretching, and hacking the original context, function and storyline. The performer infiltrates the scene and engages with the character; at once becoming part of the mise-en-scene, while simultaneously guiding it into a new direction. | Tapestry Opera | Performance | Black Box | 75 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Nicole Lizée | | | | | | | | | | Nicole Lizée | | | Michael Hidetoshi Mori (Artistic director) | 20-Mar-2015 | Canada | Toronto | Ernst Balmer Studio | 150 | Tapestry Opera | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 273 | El Conejo y el Coyote (The Tale of Rabbit and Coyote) | Ópera de cámara para niños (Chamber opera for children) | Lazo'ciation is a French-Mexican association whose objective is to diffuse culture, value intercultural projects in France and in foreign countries, as well as promoting artists and creators of different disciplines, mainly performing arts. // The Tale of Rabbit and Coyote is a chamber opera in one act written for children in 1999. Originally rooted in the Zapotec culture, the story of Rabbit and Coyote explains why Coyote spends his nights howling at the sky, searching for Rabbit who has taken refuge in the moon. The narrative blends many stories in which wily Rabbit repeatedly deceives Coyote and manages to scape, until he finally climbs to the moon. In the opera, the three singing characters -Rabbit, Coyote and a farmer- communicate in an imaginary animal language expressed through exclamations, articulations, glissandos, hiccups, Bronx cheers and several vowel resources, all drawn along by the momentum of the tale. In this opera, a fourth character exists: the narrator, who is the one that tells the story, adapting the language to the country in which the opera is being presented. The music is based on a geometric sequence that, when played, creates a sort of magical square, readable in any order: backwards, downwards, or sideways, always revisiting the same musical themes. This structure encompasses the entire piece, seeking an intervallic and consistent harmony that is intuitively accessible ti children's ears. The Tale of Rabbit and Coyote is a Zapotec story dedicated to Eero Peerti and Francisco Toledo, the painter who conceived this opera. Libretto adapted by Gloria y Víctor de la Cruz. | Lazo'ciation | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 45 | French | | 0 | 11-20 | VÍctor Rasgado | Sylvain Leclerc | | | | Rebeca Magdely | | | | | | | | Karla Lazo (General direction) | 4-Apr-2015 | France | Versailles | Salle Delavaud | 400 | Lazo'ciation | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 274 | Flatpack | | Tom Lane wrote the opera FLATPACK during his time studying for a Masters degree in composition at the University of Berlin. Originally the opera was called "Abenteuer im Einrichtungshaus", and received several workshop performances - in Berlin, Hamburg and Wembley. After he moved to Ireland, he joined forces with director Conor Hanratty and they founded Ulysses Opera Theatre in early 2012. Their first project was a revised and expanded version of the opera, now called FLATPACK, for Dublin's Fringe Festival in 2012. For the production, the company took over Dublin's historic CHQ Building, on the banks of the River Liffey. The space was ideal for the architecture of this opera, which requires multiple spaces for the first three scenes, which take place simultaneously on a loop. The audience is divided into three groups, and experiences the three scenes in order. As the audience watches one scene, they are simultaneously hearing the other two - creating their own experience of the opera from the pieces presented. For the second half of the performance, the whole audience regroups in a new space, where scenes take place simultaneously. The production in Dublin was created with help from IKEA, and production values were particularly high. It was a runaway hit at the Fringe Festival, and was a critical and commercial success. It spearheaded a big renaissance for opera among young Irish creatives, and Ulysses Opera Theatre continue to create impactful and provocative works for Dublin. | Ulysses Opera Theatre, Dublin Fringe Festival | Opera | Site Specific | 45 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Tom Lane | Cathal Synnott | | | | Conor Hanratty | Deirdre Dwyer | Deirdre Dwyer | | | | Kevin Smith | | | 9-Sep-2012 | Ireland | Dublin | CHQ Building | 100 | Ulysses Opera Theatre, Dublin Fringe Festival | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 275 | Cachafaz, tragedia bárbara (Cachafaz, barbaric tragedy) | | In Montevideo, in front of Buenos Aires, during the twenties (or in our days), La Raulito and Cachafaz (a transvestite and her protector, a former worker of the slaughterhouses) live miserably in a hovel. In spite of the hatred of the neighborhood and of the constant harassment by the corrupt police, they attempt to survive as they dream with a better future across the river. One day, they find an odd solution to their lack of food… // This brief introductory text to Argentinian composer Oscar Stranoy’s chamber opera Cachafaz (based in Argentinian writer Copi’s play) synthesizes, in its simplicity, but also in its implied mystery, the piece’s intensity and scope. Cachafaz is an example that opera is still possible nowadays. Its dramatic-musical text jeopardizes, in an absolutely contemporary way, the genre of opera. The idea of staging an opera out of the last work of the always controversial Copi is quite risky and perfectly appropriate at the same time. For starters, the original text is written in verse and set in a poor tenement house, with the neighbors acting as choir. In addition, the protagonists (Cachafaz -a decadent pimp-, la Raulito -his transvestite lover- and the corrupt policeman) stand completely apart from any traditional opera character, but, at the same time, they are built with great dramatic and musical intensity. The Contemporary Music Festival of Teatro San Martín (Buenos Aires) presents each year the Argentinian premiere of a contemporary chamber opera. In this tradition, for its XVI Season, in November of 2012, the Festival produced as world premiere its own production of Strasnoy’s Cachafaz. This version was staged by Pablo Maritano and included the participation of Ensemble 2e2m (France) under the conduction of Pierre Roullier, and the 16 piece choir Diapasón Sur, directed by Mariano Moruja. Two Argentinian opera singers renowned worldwide took the leading roles: Victor Torres and Pol González. This production was a complete success in terms of audiences and critics, with the main newspapers in Argentina praising it as “excellent”. Cachafaz is performed in Spanish, with subtitles when necessary. The touring team includes the main cast (two singers), as well as the 16-piece choir and a reduced artistic and technical team. The role of the policeman, the ensemble, the musical direction and, eventually, also the choir, can be replaced by local artists at the country of performances, as long as a fitting rehearsal plan is agreed. | The Contemporary Music Festival of Teatro San Martín, Buenos Aires (Oscar Strasnoy) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 90 | Spanish | available if necessary | 0 | > 20 | Oscar Strasnoy | Pierre Roullier | Mariano Moruja | Copi | | | Andrea Mercado | María Emilia Tambutti | | | | Gonzalo Córdova | | | 21-Nov-2012 | Argentina | Buenos Aires | Casacuberta | 566 | Ciclo de Conciertos de Música Contemporánea del Teatro San Martín (Contemporary
Music Festival of Teatro San Martín) - Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires | 2015 | Special Mention of MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 276 | il vento / schwärmen (the wind / to swarm) | | il vento/schwärmen (= „the wind/ to swarm“) is a music theatre of the Berlin composer and singer Margarete Huber. A poetic and theatrical space music, ranging from the most delicate and tender moments to storms . Natural and urban sounds of 4 - channel composition are combined with live singing and the sounds of the audience, which is actively involved in the performance. "Il vento" makes audible, how a single individual human beeing can change a (sound) envirement fundamentally. And also themasize the fascination and extasy of producing sounds and actions together in swarms of people . "Il vento" also is a very personal tribute to the time, that the composer spended in that city, and a tribute to the swarm of people with whom she was living at the time , and the raving about this time. Practical Realisation: The singer starts the performance with explaining the variations of the voice-actions of the partizipating audience (mainly breathing in different ways), that are conducted by 3 light-circles, that comes over the groups of public. The singer stands behind a light-mixer, and conducts the audience with turning of or on the light even in a very delicate dynamic way: less light means more quiet voice sounds. A few speaker of the audience should train a few words or sentences of the libretto, a few very intimate hearttouching statements. Than the light goes out and the room is completely dark.The singer starts with live-singing (“Pensieri”= Thinkings) and the pre-recorded music comes like an echo out of a 4- channel-loudspeakers. In the middle of the completely dark room sits the audience, and the singer now conducts the audience with the light circles that comes over public and touches them in a very directly sensual way, so that they can really feel and act almost dreamlike.Their breathing sounds are completing the music with impressive breathing waves, like mysterious winds, storms, breezes, tempests.Natural Multichannel- effekt! And sometimes in the darkness a single speaking voice is hearable, with a few words. The pre-recorde music is mainly very full and rich of very different musical parameters like soundscape from the forest, city, speaking and singing voices, baroque church organ and e-piano-with circuit-bending sounds, string instruments, birds and so one. Dreamlike or like remembering and swarming about something. The music ends with the words “ volo” (= i am flying) and after that only the last wave of the live-breathing public remains... | Margarete Huber | Performance | Site Specific, Audience Participation | 20 | German, Italian | | 0 | 1-10 | Margarete Huber | | | | | Margarete Huber | | | | | | | | | 5-Oct-2013 | Germany | Bielefeld | Diagonale | 300 | Margarete Huber | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 277 | Love Songs for Heim@t (Love Songs for Homeland) | | Love Songs for Heim@t is an interdisciplinary metamorphous music theater production of around 80 minutes that thematizes the Internet and the accompanying shift in our lifestyle and the way we communicate towards a more mobile and flexible modality. The piece is searching for themself new places of the presentation over and over again. In each case, acoustic or visual informations will be annexed like Cookies and brought to the next place of presentation. So it appears in a garment mobile, not fixed, stretching a great net and acts as a bearer of information. With the help of the figures of the piece different rooms and states are lighted up: Virtual, internal, from the time fallen ones. Everybody finds out his individual discussion with non-tangible, with different time perception, with interworlds and underworlds. Three singers, an instrumental ensemble and an amateur choir will bring this piece to life in an urban or rural public space. The composition integrates beside the taken down passages open modules, so- called “windows at the real time”, in which the acoustic peculiarities of the respective place play a musical Solopart. Some sequences of the piece run linearly, other parts are simultaneous visible, audible or passable for the audiance – like at the visit of an exhibition. This contemporary love story with mythological undertones is told through the characters Olaf and Rike, a modern nomadic couple, who call each other 'Orpheus' and 'Eurydice' on Skype. Their relation is stamped by distance, big longing for nearness and internal retreat. In between stands the author who tries to tell something about love. The always alert Chatroom, a constantly newly formating choir, represents the society. He challenges the figures, puts questions and presses for answers. The piece explores the theme of networking on multiple levels: Apart from the theme oft he story, It seeks to forge connections between different artistic disciplines, professional and amateurs, public spaces and art – a contemporary music theater piece, a street opera that delves into the inner and outer world of its characters. At last the intensive discussion with the subject led us to the big, old human questions: The questions after our existance, our identity, also after the existance and identity of our opponent: What is real, what thought who ist he originator (author)? Is that with which I communicate, also that whom I mean? He himself means to be? | Christina Cordelia Messner, Marie T. Martin, Ulrike Schwab (ON Neue Musik Köln) | Performance | Site Specific, Public Space, Audience Moving | 70 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Christina Cordelia Messner | Christina Cordelia Messner | | Marie T. Martin | | Ulrike Schwab | | | Marie T. Martin | | | | | | 3-Jul-2014 | Germany | Cologne | Ebertplatz | 300 | GbR Martin/Messner/Bauerecker; ON Neue Musik Köln | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 278 | Sale of a Deadman | | American Dream! Pursuit of Happiness! American Way of Life! Land of the Free! … Mit Sales of a Deadman beschwört und hinterfragt Opera Lab Berlin diese paradigmatischen Etiketten unseres westlichen Lebens und verwandelt den amerikanischen Klassiker Tod eines Handlungsreisenden in neues Musiktheater. Magisch an Evan Gardners Kompositionsverfahren ist die Verbindung von Instrumentalem Theater und Handlungsoper: Alltagsgegenstände sind Klangquellen, die performative Benutzung von Requisiten und überhaupt jeder szenische Vorgang produziert das musikalische Geschehen. So verwirklicht die Uraufführung den Amerikanischen Traum als Mythologie der Verdinglichung: Musterkoffer erklingen, Gasschläuche ertönen und Autoreifen machen die Musik. „Du hast nur, was du auch verkaufen kannst.“ Nichts als ein Koffer ist dem Salesman geblieben. Genug jedoch, um noch die letzten Dinge zu Geld zu machen: Geschichten, Beziehungen, Erinnerungen werden zu Trödel. Im Solostück „Sales of a Deadman“ dreht sich alles ums Verkaufen. Noch der Tod ist Teil der erbarmungslosen Wertschöpfungskette. „Sales of a Deadman“ ist genau in jenem Zeitraum angesiedelt, den Millers Stück gegen Ende ausspart: Zwischen selbstmörderischem Autounfall und seiner Beerdigung macht dieser Jedermann seinen Tod zu Geld. Komposition und Inszenierung verstehen das ganz buchstäblich. Als Abbild und konsequente Fortsetzung eines kapitalistischen Lebens entpuppt sich das Purgatorium als Marktplatz, auf dem die vollkommene Verwandlung des Menschen in eine Ware Voraussetzung für seine Läuterung ist. Das freie Musiktheaterensemble Opera Lab Berlin hat es sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, konsequent Neues Musiktheater herzustellen und Neue Musik in der Verbindung mit Theater und allen performativen Künsten zu verbreiten. Das Ensemble arbeitet gattungsübergreifend und versteht sich als ein Labor der Stimme. Hier wird gefiltert, gekocht und destilliert, zersetzt, erhitzt und vereist, verbunden, kristallisiert und wieder eingeschmolzen. Opera Lab Berlin greift bei der Entwicklung von „Sales of a Deadman“ diesmal auf ein klassisches Verfahren der Opernproduktion zurück: Oper befasst sich mit Mythen, Musiktheater entwirft die Mythologien seiner jeweiligen Zeit. Opera Lab benutzt den zeitgenössischen Mythos, um ihn in aktueller Weise in neues Musiktheater zu verwandeln. | Opera Lab Berlin | Performance | Black Box | 42 | English | English | 0 | 1-10 | Evan Gardner | | | | Arthur Miller | Michael Höppner | Judith Philipp | Judith Philipp | | | | Fabian Eichner | Eckehard Güther | | 13-Nov-2014 | Germany | Berlin | Ballhaus Ost | 100 | Opera Lab Berlin, Ballhaus Ost, Klangwerkstatt Berlin | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Instrumentales Theater |
| 279 | Cosa di tutti (Everyday Occurance) | 8 really small pocket operattles designed for the public space | Cosa di tutti (Everyday Occurence) – 8 really small pocket-operattles for soprano and 2 percussionists designed for the public space, duration: 8 x 3-5 minutes; This work is a really small, moderate production without any great technic or expenditure. Following the question, if it’s possible to distill a kind of essence of the genre opera and if so, what is relevant today, I deprived this „venerable lady“ of the great pomp and tryed to restrict her to the basics of her existence. The abstract level of opera I putted also through the wringer, as famous or important works of this hated and beloved genre, which - in any case - is not really just go on forever. Small and smallest melodic or rhythmic motives, snippets and noises, I plucked from existing masterpieces and sticked them together to small miniatures (comparable to the technique of cut-up in literatur, see the poems of Hertha Müller). They are so handy built, that’s possible, to „fit them in a purse“. There exist only the rest of a costume, an accessory, there is no technology, Everything is reduced to the purest. Grappling with the genre of opera brought me also to the question, what is ”real” and what is simulated in our times of man-made body parts, of roboters and virtual life. I looked generelly to the subject of reality versus artificiality. Therefore the presentation will be embedded in the public space. The musicians open their purse and possibly and maybe there will be arise imperceptibly and magic, some soupcon of opera. And in the middle of everyday life we may met one of the grand emotions - but prompt it's also over... // The first celebrated presentation of the piece was at the public space - pedestrian zone - in Aarhus/Denmark while the Festival SPOR for new music and Performance Art. For the following presentations, planed in Cologne and at some other Festivals, I will compose 3 pieces more, so that the composition will be built of 8 parts of small and smallest cut up-operattles. | Christina Cordelia Messner (Ning Ensemble) | Other | Public Space, Audience moving | 45 | English, German | | 0 | 1-10 | Christina Cordelia Messner | | | | | Christina Cordelia Messner | | | | | | | | | 9-May-2015 | Denmark | Aarhus | Public Space | 100 | GbR Martin/Messner/Bauerecker, SPOR Festival Aarhus | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Instrumentales Theater |
| 280 | Bluebottle | | Bluebottle is an oratorio for orchestra, children's choir, narrator and puppeteer. It tells the story of Nancy who is a young girl whose live is held afloat by the songs that her father sings but when one day he suddenly stops singing everything falls apart and when Nancy begins to investigate why he no longer sings she comes to believe that it is because of the flies and so she sets off to massacre all pesky flying insects! But as with all good children's stories there is a narrative that the adults in the audience will better understand. The story of a young girl living with a father who is depressed and desperately trying to reconnect with him. Bluebottle was first performed in Dublin with a choir of 500 children form school in the wicklow area, the RTE Symphony Orchestra and narrated by actress Aoife Duffin. Visuals were created by artist Matthew Robins. | Wide Open Music | Other | Proscenium Stage | 50 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Brian Irvine | Fergus Sheil | Brian Irvine | John McIlduff | | John McIlduff | | | | | | | | Matthew Robins (Animation) | 23-Nov-2014 | Ireland | Dublin | Bord Gáis Energy Theatre | 2000 | Wide Open Music; Music Generation Wicklow, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Gesang, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 281 | Garras de oro (Claws of Gold) | Cinema-concert for two voices, soloists, amplified ensemble and electronics | A 1926 SOUTH AMERICAN FILM where Uncle Sam looks at the map of Colombia with lust before snatching Panama with its long golden claws. Cinema-concert for two voices, soloists, amplified ensemble and electronics, from the poem Acuarimántima by Porfirio Barba Jacob and the first recitative of the cantata Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan I, BWV 98 by Johann Sebastian Bach, intended to one of the most remarkable films in the history of Colombian cinema, a cinematographic UFO long prohibited: Garras de Oro (1926). Mysteriously conceived by anonymous, scandalously - and briefly - projected, hurriedly removed by the censors all over Latin- America, then disappeared for more than forty years, this film has as a starting point the events that led to the independence of Panama against Colombia at the beginning of the XXth century. Are we in front of a Colombian claim movie made after the independence of Panama? Or, is it a subtle artifact of American propaganda directed against Theodore Roosevelt? For this project, Juan Pablo Carreño has felt inevitable the artistic intervention of the Colombian filmmaker Luis Nieto within the original film, by reconstructing some scenes that fit in an original way at different moments of this anonymous cinematographic work. A cinema-concert performance by Le Balcon where instrumental music, narrative illustration, political manifesto and questioning about national identity intersect, complement and respond. Garras de oro (Fiction Self-III) was premiered by Le Balcon at Church of St Eustache the 25th and 26th July 2013, during the festival Paris Quartier d’Été. In 2015, Le Balcon did a tour with this show in Colombia (Cartagena-Barranquilla-Bogotá), supported by the Institut Français, the Spedidam, the French delegation in Colombia, Colombian Republic Bank, International Cinema Festival of Cartagena, Proimágenes, the Film Patrimony of Colombia, among other institutions. | Juan Pablo Carreño, Luis Nieto (Ensemble Le Balcon) | Performance | Site Specific | 42 | Various | | 0 | 11-20 | Juan Pablo Carreño | Maxime Pascal | | | | Luis Nieto | | | | | | | | | 25-Jul-2013 | France | Paris | Church of St. Eustache | 500 | Nova et Vetera; Paris Quartier d’Été | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 282 | Alverden god Nat (All the World, Goodnight) | | All the World, Goodnight is based on the story of Jens Munk (1579-1628), who during the reign of King Christian IV sailed off on long, dangerous and challenging voyages to look for the North West Passage. The music of the opera is by Peter Bruun, and the libretto is by Ursula Andkjær Olsen. Both are associated with the FIGURA Ensemble, which celebrateded their twentieth anniversary in the year of the All the World, Goodnight world premiere. Peter Bruun, Ursula Andkjær Olsen and the FIGURA Ensemble have collaborated earlier on the opera Miki Alone (2008), which was awarded the Music Prize of the Nordic Council in 2008. In the opera All the World, Goodnight we follow Jens Munk, the son of a bankrupt father, who travels out at a very young age, first to the New World and then several times to the cold North. He has to look real death in the eyes and loses his whole crew. Week after week on the cold ice, as if hypnotized by the energy of the ice, Jens Munk is drawn time after time into this universe. After repeated unsuccessful attempts he ends up in prison. He has not achieved his goal, but he is not dead either. The title All the World, Goodnight comes from Jens Munk’s diary. It is the last sentence he wrote in his log when he was in Hudson Bay and thought he was about to die. “Imagine sitting up there on the white, white ice with the feeling that you wanted to conquer the world, but now it is over. And you have not won. There is no glory, no honour; it seems you can only sit there and wait for it to be over. That story hits you as a human being, regardless of time and space,” says Peter Bruun. The opera is the story of a courageous human being who time after time defies all reason, and sets out on a perilous voyage. It happens three times in succession, and it ends badly each time, but he comes through in one piece. That is what makes Jens Munk a hero, but a hero who does not triumph. He is left with a strange feeling of having defied death but at the same time of having failed – and then just with a sense of emptiness. In our own time there are many people who risk life and limb only to win nothing, but we hear nothing about them. The production also features the Faroese vocal ensemble MPIRI. When the production goes on tour abroad, it will be in collaboration with a local choir. The aim is to create communication with the local community that leaves an impression, so that the production is experienced and remembered in a different way. | FIGURA Ensemble | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 70 | Danish | | 0 | 11-20 | Peter Bruun | Casper Schreiber | | Ursula Andkjær Olsen | Jens Munk | Rolf Heim, Per Linderoth | Filippa Berglund | | | Edith B. Pedersen | Anders Elberling | Sonja Lea | | | 13-Jan-2014 | Denmark | Copenhagen | Det Kongelige Teater | 180 | FIGURA Ensemble | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 283 | FIVE | | FIVE is an electropop chamber opera staging tales by Perrault, Andersen and the Grimm Brothers. In a manner of speaking, FIVE is a decomposition of fairy tales: it's about archaic themes and the dark side of the fairy tales - such as anxiety, abuse, hunger, cold, poverty, violence, withdrawal of love and death. Famous tales alternate with unknown, surreal, absurd and drastic tales like Knoist and His Three Sons, Sweet Porridge, The Poor Beggar Woman. The dark sides of the tales are emphasized. UMS 'n JIP's chamber opera is a unique and charming mixture of Electro, Serialism, unexpected quotations by Furrer, Sciarrino and Rossini. Altogether offers a hybrid form between performance, sound intallation and the traditional opera. | Ums 'n Jip | Performance | Site Specific | 90 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Javier Hagen, Ulrike Mayer-Spohn | | | | Gisela Ethaner Schelbe, Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault | | Simon Wunderlich | | | | | Simon Wunderlich | | | 10-Oct-2012 | Switzerland | | | 70 | Ums 'n Jip; Zeughaus Kultur Brig-Glis, Ackermannshof Basel, Kunstraum Walcheturm Zürich | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater |
| 284 | Josefine | | „Josefine“ is an experimental music theatre project dealing with the tops of community in the digital era. The short story by Franz Kafka „Josefine, the Singer“ was used as a reference point for both text and composition. In times of the global village everybody seems to be connected: you discover people in social networks, who you have never met – but you know where they grew up and how many friends you have in common. It takes only a minute to join mass movements in the word wide web, such as signing a petition against factory farming or an evil state or even more. Who is that mass of people? How does the masses of the internet look like? How does a choir – a polymorphic crowd or an inactive mass – sound like in these times? Where would a star – the one you look up to, while you hate him at the same time – like Josephine the singer (as Kafkas main figure in the novel) would be found today? Is there only one or are there many in the boundless space of the www? And how does one set himself apart from the other, the subject from the community, all in the disembodied expanse of the digital world? On stage a mixed choir of 50 people forms a counterweight to the bodiless character of the internet. The classical figure of the choir appears, but yet is heard very differently, behaves differently. The choir is moving, it is fragile and frail, all of a sudden becomes a mob, turns into a swarm – it’s the polymorphic crowd: the structures of the internet become visible through the bodies, while they speak, whistle and sing. But do they sing at all? If you take a close look on Kafkas prose, the description of the voice of Josefine are disparat: It is at the same time a singing and not a singing, a whistling and not a whistling. In the end, you can not judge, whether Josefine can whistle or cheep better than any of the other mice of the Mouse Folk. This chant, that is expressed by the choir on stage, is combined with body-movements and different formations of the choir. Therefore, the music theatre Josefine understands vocals, composition, body, video and stage as equal means of the theatre production. The choir is interrupted from time to time by raw orchestral sounds. These sounds go together with movements of the stage and rise images of masses in the 20th century. In Josefine movebal pieces of the composition were initiator for scenic occasions and actions, that were redefined again and again: Josefine sounds different on every performance. | Fonds Experimentelles Musiktheater, Theater Krefeld und Mönchengladbach | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 64 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Sagardía | Lennart Dohms | | Björn SC Deigner | Franz Kafka | Christian Grammel | Agnes Fabich | Charlotte Pistorius | Fanti Baum | | Agnes Fabich | | | | 13-Oct-2012 | Germany | Mönchengladbach | Theater Krefeld und Mönchengladbach | 0 | Fonds Experimentelles Musiktheater | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 285 | Top 4 | | Top 4 is an experimenral micro opera based on the "Google poetry" (up to the top 4 autocomplete suggestions from 19 searched in Google) arranged into a strange story about a couple whose relationship undergoes a test facing a mental ilness of one of the lovers | Urszula Zyguła | Opera | Black Box | 8 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Urszula Zyguła | | | | | Urszula Zyguła | | | | | | | | | 5-Jun-2015 | United Kingdom | | | 355 | Student Project for the Royal Conservatorie of Scotland's PLUG Festival | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 286 | Shifting Ground | | Shifting Ground is an intimate installation and performance created by media artist and performer Zoe Scoglio and collaborators. Physicalised sound, voice, gestural choreography and interactive projection mapping, take the audience on a journey linking the human and geological worlds, from the cosmic to the concrete. In this ceremonial work, remnants of a living room, a construction site and demolition site converge, existing in a state of transformation between the natural and humanmade environment. This archipelago of deconstructed geological and domestic materials orbit a central coffee table and include a semi-circle of seating for the small audience. Traversing between scales and timeframes, Shifting Ground seeks to remind us of the impermanent and fleeting nature of our time on this earth and the symbiotic relationship we have with the geological elements that form it. The relationship between sound and image is integral to Shifting Ground. This dynamic and truly live interaction is made possible through the contribution of sound designer Nigel Brown and the resulting live processing and sonic interplay between Nigel and performer Zoe Scoglio. An environment is created where all objects encountered can be activated either through their ability to create sound, emit sound, or be mobilised by subsonic vibrations. The centrepiece of the work, a custom built circular coffee table, becomes both clock face and altar. This occurs both visually and sonically. Transducers and contact microphones, concealed beneath the table’s false surface, allow for the live processing, amplification and sonic transformation of the sound made as the rocks are moved on the table’s surface. Later, tonal compositions and live improvised vocalisation, fed through the table by the attached transducers, physically move the salt upon the table’s surface creating crystalline patterns through the cymatic effect of vibration. In collaboration with interaction designer, Chris Heywood, methods of wirelessly controlling and sequencing sounds and LEDs within portable sculptural polystyrene speaker-rocks has been achieved. Chris has also developed a complex system to enable automated sequencing of sound, light, image and mechanics. The use of 3D RGBD video camera technology to map video projection onto tracked objects and the human form in real time, creates an intimate environment within the installation without the interference of an often intrusive video/lighting operation. | Zoe Scoglio | Performance | Black Box | 45 | No language | | 0 | 1-10 | | | | | | | | | | | Zoe Scoglio | | Nigel Brown | Zoe Scoglio (Concept), Chris Heywood (Interaction design), Zoe Stuart (Prop designer) | 19-Jul-2012 | Australia | Melbourne | Arts House | 30 | Zoe Scoglio | 2015 | Winning Project MTN 2015 | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 287 | Sleevz (Mouw) | | A dance theatre production for children from 18 months to 4 years old. // Concept: Socks and Stockings dance away. Sweaters transform into small silly creatures. Sweet little monsters appear trough peepholes, sleeves and legs. Moved by the music, an unusual singer with 8 arms dances a devoted duet with the long-armed girl. In SLEEVZ’s wondrous world all that is different, can be exceptional. // How it came to be: The production/performance SLEEVZ evolved from CABAN, the creative lab of Theater De Spiegel. As a separate installation or module of the tunnel of setting was already tested and experimented by children, parents and the two musicians as well as the composer. They did a lot of improvisations with the children and together with Karel Van Ransbeeck as artistic director combined the so collected material into a truly collective performance. Also the impulses of the costume design were very important during the creation. By using obvious parts of clothing in a more abstract context we hope to open the creative mind of both the youngest ones and their adult caretakers. | Theater De Spiegel | Instrumental Theatre | Black Box | 40 | Dutch | | 8 | 1-10 | Mathias Coppens | | | | | Karolien Verlinden | Karel Van Ransbeeck | Astrid Michaelissen | | Karolien Verlinden | | | | Karel Van Ransbeeck (Concept) | 18-Feb-2015 | Belgium | Antwerp | Theater De Spiegel | 90 | Theater De Spiegel | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Instrumentales Theater, Kinder und Jugendstück, Puppen |
| 288 | AntiMidas, or, Bankers in Hades | | Living in interesting times perhaps means that, like Offenbach, we should reserve the right to rewrite Dante’s Divine Comedy as black farce. The difficult, bizarre and tragic circumstances people across Europe find themselves in suggest that, like Jarry, we could draw on the chaotic energy of the absurd. AntiMidas, or, Bankers in Hades distorts the myth of Midas for modern ends. Antimidas, the Banker King, has a simple problem: everything he values turns to excrement – literally. What neither he nor his fellow usurers understand is that they are all already dead, visiting and revisiting the sufferings they caused in life, unable to grasp what they did wrong, or that what they did was wrong. Satan, it would appear, is too subtle in his punishments: they go on living a luxurious life, causing misery to others: where is the justice? Antimidas even enjoys the company of his wife and daughter, though his wife soon realizes that the reason his curse has not afflicted them is a simple one: he doesn’t value their love. And his daughter reaches a startling conclusion concerning his business: the only way for any transaction to go ahead, is if Antimidas doesn’t value it. Money must be abolished. People must be forced to make, to grow, to build things, without any remuneration – and to give them away, for fear of losing everything. They must be fed and clothed, absolutely gratis. Absolute Socialism is established for the first time in human history – in Hell. Of course, when Antimidas finally realizes the error of his ways, he is overcome with gratitude and love – with unexpected consequences for his family, fellow bankers, and Hell itself… The Devil, it would appear, is more subtle than Dante gave him credit for. // no picture is made to endure nor to live with / but it is made to sell and sell quickly / with usura, sin against nature, / is thy bread ever more of stale rags / is thy bread dry as paper / (Ezra Pound, Canto 45) | Evangelia Rigaki, Samuel Beckett Theatre Dublin | Opera | Black Box | 60 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Evangelia Rigaki | Lindy Tennent-Brown | | W.N.Herbert | | John Lloyd Davies | | | | | | | | | 12-Dec-2013 | Ireland | Dublin | Samuel Beckett Theatre | 350 | Evangelia Rigaki, Samuel Beckett Theatre | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 289 | Picnic in the Cemetery | | Picnic in the cemetery juxtaposes the macabre with the light-hearted – acknowledging on the one hand the inevitable destination for all of us, asking on the other hand whimsical questions about choices we make in life. It invites the audience to muse about dying, but more importantly to reflect on living. // The substance: At the core of our work is a selection of original chamber music set for violin, cello and piano, and can be enjoyed as such. But the work is in fact a concert, an installation, a theatrical performance and a filmic experience rolled into one. It is music theatre, now. The non-text based music is linked together by a series of silent-film type titles showing the names of the music and texts for reflection. These texts, although neither sung nor spoken, collectively form the libretto for the piece. // The design: To make sure the audience come to our show with as little pre-conceived notion as possible, we set out to make everything as unfamiliar as possible. We choose venues which would seem unconventional (at least to the local public) and design an interior that is unlike any concert hall. We prefer small spaces, and limit audience number to less than 100, more often 50+, in order to ensure a proper experience of the work. A pre-show portion of the performance takes place in the waiting area ten minutes prior to announced show time where the audience first meets some of the performers. Audience is only allowed inside the actual “performance” space when the actors lead them in. Everyone then explores the space together. It is our desire that the audience will feel that the space we etner is as much theirs as ours to explore. Ideally, audience sits around and amidst the performers on loosely arranged chairs they are encouraged to move (a modest metaphor for all of us needing to find our place in the world). In the performance shown here however, audience sat on two sides in fixed seats due to conditions imposed by the venue. // Audience engagement: Sitting in close distance to the performers in an intimate space, the audience feels every minute details of the performance; by the same token, the performers also keenly feel the audience’ presence and can directly engage with them. The audience thus truly becomes part of the performance environment. Their headshots, taken in the preshow, are shown in the credit list, more formally crediting their contribution and signifying our collective journey on stage and in life. | Macao Arts Festival | Performance | Black Box | 60 | Chinese (Cantonese), English | | 0 | 1-10 | Njo Kong Kie | Njo Kong Kie | | | | | Fung Kwok Kee, Gabriel | | | | | Fung Kwok Kee, Gabriel; Lam Chon Iap | Chan Kwun Wang | | 24-May-2013 | Macau | | Macao Arts Festival | 50 | Point View Art Association; Macao Arts Festival | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 290 | One More Pioneer | | gamut inc, run by Marion Wörle and Maciej Sledziecki, present their second music theatre piece ONE MORE PIONEER. In times of simultanious digital euphory and fatigue the piece questions the concept of „future“ and enters the field of progress, utopia and technophilia. The piece is based loosely on a short story of David Foster Wallace: a story retold from a retelling about a small jungle civilization‘s advancement and eventual downfall as it interacts with an exceptionally brilliant child/guru. This framework interacts with found text footage, like for example frequently asked questions by Google or excerpts from UNA bomber Ted Kaczynski ́s manifesto. Projections and „talking heads“ shot by video artist Zan Lyons, slides, pre-produced texts and the performer Jörn J. Burmester will present the piece on stage. Dark and delicate electro-acoustic and electronic tunes, delivered by gamut inc ́s retro futuristic, self-built and computer driven music machines, forming a technoid totem pole in the centre of the stage, will carry the piece through rise and fall of civilization, as it is retold by someone who was himself told by someone who overheard it on a United flight, told by one passenger to another. The story is given several possible versions and endings, nobody knows which version is true, because information has no weight. The piece was shown in Berlin (Brotfabrik), Cologne (ARTheater) and Munich (Schwere Reiter Theater) and claimed positive feedback from audience, press and in professional circles. It was invited to the Resonance Festival in Elblag (PL) in an international version. We´re working on other possibilities to present the piece to an audience in an international context. | gamut inc | Performance | Black Box | 60 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Marion Wörle, Maciej Sledziecki | | | | David Foster Wallace | | | | Paul Paulun | | Zan Lyons | Falk Windmüller | Robert Nacken | Gerhard Kern (Instrument builder) | 28-May-2015 | Germany | Berlin | Brotfabrik | 50 | Zentrum für Aktuelle Musik - ZAM e.V., Schwere Reiter Musik | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Videokunst |
| 291 | La Celestina | | 'La Celestina' is a performance-installation piece, created by ERRATICA in collaboration with Chicago-based puppetry company Manual Cinema and composer Matt Rogers. It was commissioned and presented by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Through projected shadow puppetry and multi-channel sound, the installation brings the museum’s early sixteenth-century Vélez Blanco patio to life, retelling the story of the celebrated, eponymous Spanish novel by Fernando de Rojas (published in 1499), among the marble statues and behind the shuttered windows of a Renaissance Spanish courtyard. The tragic fate of lovers Calisto and Melibea, and the bawdy schemes of the procuress and witch Celestina, are recounted in snatches of rumour and gossip by an ensemble of voices whose idle speculation blends with fragments of 16th-century villancicos and Ladino folk music. As an installation in the Metropolitan Museum's Vélez Blanco patio, 'La Celestina' surrounded the audience with sound. Each of the ten statues in the space was associated with one or more speakers, casting each marble figure as a performer and character, in addition to an accompanying bass viol player. These singing statues narrate and comment upon the story, which is depicted mainly through the use of shadow puppetry projected in and around the windows of the courtyard’s façade. A dynamic lighting design adds to the immersive theatre of the piece, by highlighting the various statues as they converse, and throwing their shadows across the space to commune with the shadowy characters in the windows. The piece lasts for 24 minutes, and plays on a loop every half hour. The scale of the installation encourages audience members to move between the statues and hear the piece from a range of different perspectives. Although originally designed for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the piece was was also performed at the Marian Goodman Gallery, London. It can be re-adapted to fit other large architectural spaces (indoors or outdoors), museums, or galleries. And although it was originally conceived with sculptures from the Metropolitan's collection, it can be re-performed with a variety of artworks, including abstract pieces, or simply with speakers positioned in space. | ERRATICA (Manual Cinema, Matt Rogers) | Other | Site Specific, Moving Audience | 24 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Matt Rogers | James Halliday | | Patrick Eakin Young | Fernando de Rojas | Patrick Eakin Young | | | | | Hannah Wasilewski | Burke Brown | Seamus Fogarty | James Halliday, Victoria Couper (Arranger), Manual Cinema Chicago (Shadow Puppeteers) | 20-Mar-2015 | USA | New York | Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vélez Blanco Patio | 140 | ERRATICA | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Videokunst, Puppen |
| 292 | Démesure (Excessiveness) | Ein Musiktheater (A music theatre) | The world is too small. It is too big. "Démesure" explores the longing of our generation to cope in a present over-saturated with information. The world seems to get smaller all the time, and yet through this process its true vastness is exposed. Its complexity is endless, its interconnectedness unpredictable. The options available to us are limitless, power and helplessness exist side by side. "Démesure" therefore takes the form of a "mise en corps", and reacts to music by contemporary French and German composers, music that juxtaposes the beauty of fullness with the oppressive idea of a simultaneous dilation and compression.The audience is invited to examine this ambivalence together with the musicians, both musically and theatrically. Including new music by Franck Bedrossian, Christophe Bertrand, Raphaël Cendo, Martin Grütter, Johannes Kreidler, Sarah Nemtsov and Alexander Schubert. "Démesure" includes the following new music works which were cut into pieces and arranged as a completely new collage by Zafraan Ensemble with kind permission of the composers: Johannes Kreidler (*1980): "in hyper intervals" for violin, clarinet, percussio, piano and electronics, 2006-2009 (arr. Miguel Pérez Iñesta, 2015) // Sarah Nemtsov (*1980): "Verlassene Orte / Berlin" for alto-flute, bass clarinet, harp, prepared piano and percussion, 2010 // Christophe Bertrand (1981-2010): "Satka" for flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin and violoncello, 2008 // Martin Grütter (*1983): "Zirkelspielchen" for flute, clarinet, piano and percussion, 2011 // Alexander Schubert (*1979): "Laplace Tiger" for percussion and electronics, 2009 // Franck Bedrossian (*1971): "The edges are no longer parallel" for piano and electronics, 2013 // Raphaël Cendo (*1975): "Tract" for flute, bass clarinet, tubax, piano, harp, violin, viola and violoncello, 2007 | La Cage (Zafraan Ensemble) | Instrumental Theatre | Black Box, Moving Audience | 53 | No language | | 0 | 11-20 | Johannes Kreidler, Sarah Nemtsov, Christophe Bertrand, Martin Grütter, Alexander Schubert, Franck Bedrossian, Raphaël Cendo | Clemens Hund-Göschel, Miguel Pérez Iñesta | | | | Aliénor Dauchez | Michael Kleine | Michael Kleine | Janis El-Bira | Sergiu Matis | | Susana Alonso | | Aliénor Dauchez (Idea) | 20-Mar-2015 | Germany | Berlin | Ehemaliges Stummfilmkino Delphi | 60 | Zafraan Ensemble e.V.; La Cage e.V., Per Aspera e.V. | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 293 | WISE BLOOD, an immersive opera based on the novel by Flannery O'Connor | | Co-commissioned by the Walker Art Center and The Soap Factory exhibition space, the immersive opera exhibition WISE BLOOD, based on the southern gothic novel by Flannery O'Connor, tells the story of a troubled war veteran who returns home and finds it's gone. This fierce tragic comedy, with surreal and morbid plot lines, presents dislocated characters in crises, each searching for a sense of place in the world. Ultimately concerning the themes of love and loss, O’Connor’s characters are rendered in comic and grotesque situations, colliding with their pain, violence, and often ludicrous behavior. The opera features five voices and narrator, brass band, chamber musicians, and sound design. The libretto text comes entirely from the Flannery O’Connor novel. It also serves as a score for the simultaneous media elements. WISE BLOOD is performed as a kind of New Orleans-style second-line opera. The singers move, accompanied by brass and other musicians, through sets and film projections. The main character, Hazel Motes, arrives on a train, drives a car and preaches on its hood. Each character is accompanied by an ensemble, sometimes merging when the characters interact. The audience will be free to move around in the exhibition space, or have the characters and music pass by them, just as with second-line brass band parades. WISE BLOOD may also be adapted and presented in a proscenium theater. SYNOPSIS: The shell-shocked Hazel Motes, descendant of a family of firebrand preachers, returns from a faraway war to his birthplace. He discovered his childhood home and family are gone. Haunted by a “ragged figure who moved from tree to tree in the back of his mind,” he tries to find his bearings in the nearby city Taulkinham. There he’s antagonized by an encounter with a lying minstrel preacher, and he ends up preaching against preaching, standing on the hood of his car. Someone attempts to monetize his improvised theology of The Church Without Christ, and that leads to mayhem and murder. After his car is destroyed he recognizes his attachment to false idols and blinds himself, then dies. Finally he is taken into the arms of someone who cares for him. | Walker Art Center & The Soap Factory (Anthony Gatto) | Opera | Black Box, Moving Audience | 90 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Anthony Gatto | David Bloom | | Anthony Gatto | Flannery O'Connor | | | | | | | Heidi Eckwall | Reid Kruger | Chris Larson (Sculpture and Set Installation) | 4-Jun-2015 | USA | Minneapolis | The Soap Factory | 150 | Wise Blood Productions | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Literaturbearbeitung |
| 294 | My Voice Has An Echo In It | | Temporary Distortion is an ensemble of experimental artists working across disciplines to create performances, installations, films, albums, and works for the stage. Interdisciplinary artist Kenneth Collins formed Temporary Distortion in 2002, and under his leadership the company has the mission to explore the potential tensions and overlaps found between practices in visual art, theater, cinema, and music. The company’s recent work has focused on long-duration, installation-based performance featuring live music, where spectators freely come and go throughout allnight events. Our project, MY VOICE HAS AN ECHO IN IT, is a six-hour durational performance of live music, spoken text, and video set within a freestanding, soundproof installation that is 24 feet long by 6 feet wide. The audience watches the performance through two-way mirrored windows lining the walls of the installation, creating a mise en abyme, as the performer’s reflections stretch off infinitely in both directions inside the box. The performers, confined within this soundproof box, are heard only through headphones and cannot see the audience on the other side of the glass. While viewing the performers through the two-way mirrors, audience members listen with the headphones to live music ranging from drifty ambient sounds to erasure poetry to raucous punk-inspired anthems along the outside perimeter of the installation. When not listening to the live performance through the headphones, the audience experiences an ambient and atmospheric prerecorded score delivered by speakers attached to the outside of the installation. This original score was composed to serve as counterpoint to the live event and is used create a greater sense of dual environments--the world of the performers inside of the box and that of the audience standing outside. MY VOICE HAS AN ECHO IN IT features performances by Kenneth Collins, Scott Fetterman, Jenna Kyle, and John (Sully) Sullivan. Text, installation design, and direction is by Collins; music composition and sound design is by Sullivan; video design is by Fetterman. Temporary Distortion operates out of New York City, where we develop our work together from conception to production. The company has also presented work in over 20 cities in the US, Canada, France, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, Australia, South Korea, and Japan. Our work has been shown at theaters, museums, galleries, cinemas, and at various festivals worldwide. | Temporary Distortion | Performance | Black Box, Moving Audience | 360 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | John Sully | | | Kenneth Collins | | Kenneth Collins | | | | | Scott Fetterman | | John Sully | Kenneth Collins (Installation designer) | 19-Mar-2014 | USA | New York | Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center | 200 | Temporary Distortion; EMPAC: Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 295 | Hypermusic Prologue | A projective opera in seven planes | Zafraan Ensemble presents the scenic world premiere of the chamber opera "Hypermusic Prologue – A projective opera in seven planes" by Hèctor Parra und Lisa Randall: When the extra-dimensional space is undetectable in front of our eyes, can we at least sense it acoustically? Inspired by the bestseller "Warped Passages", Hèctor Parra wrote a chamber opera together with Harvard physicist Lisa Randall. The work deals with hidden universes, the existential urge to research as well as our boundaries of understanding and interdependencies in the so-called real world. With the libretto of "Hypermusic Prologue", Lisa Randall drew on her popular science books, in which she attempts to make the five-dimensional hyper space more accessible to the layperson. The central figure is a scientist, torn between her love for her partner and her passion for theoretical physics. In the course of the opera, she finds herself immersed in the fifth dimension, while her partner remains tied to normal spacetime. Hèctor Parra found a sensual and energetic musical language for this material, enabling the listener to experience the complex hyper reality both emotionally and intellectually through the use of psycho-acoustic effects. Thus, the audience is taken on an oftentimes bizarre and absurd journey, which offers not only points of contact with parallel worlds, but also access to a unique inner experience. | Zafraan Ensemble (Sophiensaele Berlin, Gare du Nord Basel) | Performance | Black Box | 62 | English | | 0 | 11-20 | Hèctor Parra | Manuel Nawri | | Lisa Randall | | Benjamin Schad | Tobias Flemming | Tobias Flemming | | | Aron Kitzig | Aron Kitzig | | Thomas Goepfer, IRCAM (Electronic composition), Wolfgang Heiniger, Hadas Pe'ery (Live electronics) | 10-Apr-2013 | Germany | Berlin | Sophiensaele | 250 | Zafraan Ensemble e.V.; Sophiensaele Berlin, Gare du Nord Basel | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang |
| 296 | Opa übt (Paul Practices) | Ein ambitioniertes Opernprojekt (An ambitious opera exercise) | For “PAUL PRACTICES“, the performance group FUX encounters the theatrical genre of the opera to create an alternative aesthetic for music theatre. As a counterpart to the opulent opera-apparatus they appear as a 3-headed ensemble. The pompous opera house is replaced by a blank, empty room. The budget gets reduced so that no orchestra tone could be played live. This huge disproportion obligates FUX to find new solutions. They expose themselves to a radical excessive demand that forces them to be composers, librettists, directors, conductors, musicians, singer, performer and technicians at once. They appropriate the opera to make something different out of it. To do so, they target the opera “Lanzelot” by Paul Dessau, Heiner Müller & Ginka Tscholakowa, written in 1969 for the 20th birthday of the German Democratic Republic and premiered at the Staatsoper Berlin. “Lanzelot” is a monumental opera for 270 participants with a multitude of composition-styles and a multilayer variation of the dragonslayer epic. Back then, Dessau and Müller formulated the clear aim to create a better world with the opera. What might seem anachronistic today is exactly what interests FUX. How are the contemporary chances for such an emphatic political understanding of art in general and opera in particular? From the music and text structures of “Lanzelot”, FUX abstracts new patterns, which they enlarge to the theatrical space, the light dramaturgy, the narrative, the stage acts and the music until there’s no single note or word from the original left. Everything got converted and reformulated. What happens on stage has to be generated and operated only by the three FUX-members. So, they have to practice: with their instruments, the technology, their voices and bodies, their presence on stage, the alternative big picture. The evolving interplay of music, technology and scenic action is getting too complex to master without failure. If a mistake occurs, they have to stop and rewind to wipe it out in the repetition. In “PAUL PRACTICES”, to practice doesn’t only mean the rehearsal of the performance, but to practice within the performance itself. By that, FUX explores if and how the utopian and the practicing of a different society can take place in music theatre today. Can our contemporary society practice something in common or is it doomed to only individual exercises in self-optimization? This question becomes a leitmotif in finding a new opera for the independent theatre. | FUX | Performance | Black Box | 75 | German | | 0 | 1-10 | Stephan Dorn, Falk Rößler, Nele Stuhler | | | | | Stephan Dorn, Falk Rößler, Nele Stuhler | Annatina Huwiler | | | | | | | FUX: Stephan Dorn, Falk Rößler, Nele Stuhler (Artistic directors) | 5-Sep-2013 | Switzerland | Basel | Kaserne Basel, Reithalle | 200 | FUX; Treibstoff theatre festival Basel | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Instrumentales Theater |
| 297 | Sunken Cathedral | | SUNKEN CATHEDRAL is a multimedia musical performance work by Korean- American female composer, vocalist, and sound artist Bora Yoon exploring the subconscious and cultural ley lines of her Korean heritage, within her American and musical identity. Inspired by architecture, and music’s relationship to space, SUNKEN CATHEDRAL utilizes Yoon’s unique approach as a site-specific composer to create and build a musical architecture and sonic journey through various rooms, corridors, chambers, and dream spaces on the theatrical stage, which serve as a metaphoric journey through memory and cultural identity. Through a panoply of live instruments, found objects, visuals, and poetic narrative -- a live musical sound design score and performance piece is composed and performed, depicting a dynamic sonic narrative that accompanies and resonates the literary, emotional, and cultural space of each chapter. Instrumentation includes voice, viola, taps, theremin, found sounds from the venue stage, stethescope, contact mics, body sounds, metronomes, turntable, electronics, samples, field recordings, and Korean traditional drumming. Elements have been carefully constructed with ease of touring in mind - utilizing light and moving image (rather than physical set design) to create a dynamic range of realms, and sense of place, so that instruments, performance and poetic narrative can come to the foreground. Collaborators include Vong Pak (Korean Traditional drumming and dance), Tom Lee (production design), Adam Larsen (video design), and director Glynis Rigsby. The music of SUNKEN CATHEDRAL was released in April 2014 on music label INNOVA (label of the American Composers Forum). Work-in-progress performances and workshops to develop the staging of the score were supported and developed as part of the HERE Arts Residency Program (HARP), New York's Park Avenue Armory, and the Singapore Arts Festival. The ultimate goal with this performance is to create a sense of an architectural and archetypal journey, examining human and cultural relationships to sound and space, that is both inward and outward. Through a sequence of corridors, chambers, gateways, and challenges within this memory palace, the psychological and sociological fabric in which we coexist, illuminate larger truths of the cyclical nature of life. | Bora Yoon | Opera | Black Box | 60 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Bora Yoon | | | | | Glynis Rigsby | Tom Lee | Georgia Junghyun Lee | Glynis Rigsby | | Adam Larsen | Haejin Han | | | 14-Jan-2015 | USA | New York | La MaMa Experimental Theater Club | 85 | Beth Morrison Projects, HERE Art Center | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance |
| 298 | Die Hamburger Sindbadauken (The Sinbadventurers) | Ein Kinderopernabenteuerspaß (An opera for children (and cool adults)) | In 2001 the Staatsoper Hamburg embarked on a journey to introduce more young people to opera. This new series – “opera piccola” – broke new ground in Germany by feature children as the performers and musicians. Since then thousands of children have experienced opera as musical theater performed by their peers. Significantly, the Staatsoper Hamburg has also contributed to the genre “Kinderoper” by commissioning new works, of which this, “The Sinbadventurers” is the most recent. It was decided to integrate local history into the opera, hence the references to Hamburg, the Elbe river, the medieval city of Rungholt, and the exchange of Heligoland with the British for Zanzibar. First and foremost among the many aims of this project is that young people should experience all of the aspects of opera – singing, acting, staging, lighting, orchestra – just in a smaller version. No amplification is used, and only live music. To accommodate the less powerful voices of children, the performances take place on a smaller stage, where the audience is never more than a few meters from the performers on stage. The children are cast each year anew, and the musicians are selected from Hamburg youth orchestras. The singers range from 8-18 years old, the musicians are 13-21. All productions are double cast, which enables more children to take part, and also ensures that cast members can cover for each other in the event of illness. The participants are not paid; they only receive a stipend to cover public transportation to and from the opera house. The singers rehearse with the musical staff three afternoons a week for 8 weeks to train their voices and learn their roles; after memorizing their parts, they work with the stage director for 10 weeks to refine their acting skills and learn the staging. In the week leading up to the premiere, the children are excused from their normal school responsibilities and rehearse every day with the orchestra, which has 16 rehearsals with the conductor over a period of five months. It is an incredibly demanding project for the children, most of whom are in school every day from 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, even the younger ones. This does not discourage them, rather the children are especially excited to undertake something unique which sets them apart from their peers. While it is not the aim of the *opera piccola* to produce future opera singers, many have gone on to study music and are now singing in opera houses in Germany. | Staatsoper Hamburg (Benjamin Gordon) | Opera | Black Box | 82 | German | | 0 | > 20 | Benjamin Gordon | Benjamin Gordon | | Francis Huesers | | Nicola Panzer | Robert Pflanz | Kirsten Fischer | | | | | | | 8-Feb-2015 | Germany | Hamburg | Staatsoper Hamburg | 140 | Staatsoper Hamburg | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 299 | Breve sueño (Brief dream) | Musical theater / diptych | Short sleep is a contemporary musical diptych for the stage composed by Beyond and The Sleepers, two works that address the same issue from different angles: death. I -Beyond (for dancers and chamber orchestra) puts its focus on the subject of life after death. It proposes an expansion of languages in which the vital energy (chi / prana / qi) and the persecution of its immateriality are manifested in the work and become visible, apparently objectified albeit fleetingly unfinished, following an unreadable course. Beyond works with subtle energy levels crossed by the poetic exploration of its reach in other planes of existence, through research of sound experiments with TCI (Instrumental Transcommunication or Electronic Voice Phenomena, i.e. sound recordings that make other possible planes of existence accessible to contact) and the traditions of spiritism (A. Kardec), mediumship and near-death experiences. II-The sleepers (for five singers, ensemble and dancers) is based on texts about the legend of the seven sleepers of Ephesus from the third century AD in their original language (Coptic, Syriac) collected and translated by I. Guidi in 1884/5. It focuses its attention on a historical-religious rift where the idea of "endless life" is present. According to several sources and versions, the story tells how persecuted young men hide in a cave where they are finally locked and, inexplicably, sleep for hundreds of years until, when the cave is opened again by chance, they wake up to a new world. Mixture of Indo-European and Semitic traditions, this story is a narrative fusion of myth, legend and folktale, and at the same time a synthesis of different cultures and beliefs of a distant era. Short sleep, as an integral work organically set, plays all the time with musical, performing and conceptual connections between Beyond and The sleepers, taking the idea of mirroring to multiple constructive instances. On the other hand, it makes use of contemporary language as in a dream, without respect for any canon, as it makes use of multiple styles almost like aromas mingling in a great feast. Finally, it incorporates a historically intermediate element that functions as a kind of synthesis: a poem by John Donne, western specialist on metaphysical poetry. Short sleep tries to open questions, mobilize beliefs and promote a different perception of things, of ourselves and of our relationship with the ultimate meaning of life by exploring the seemingly unfathomable: death. | Experimental Center of the Colon Theater (Patricia Martínez) | Performance | Black Box | 56 | Spanish | | 0 | > 20 | Patricia Martínez | Santiago Santero, Diego Ruiz | | Patricia Martínez | Ignacio Guidi, John Donne | | Patricia Martínez | Colon Theater | | Melanie Alfie | Mariela Yeregui | Sergio Iriarte | Gerardo Morel | Patricia Martínez (General director) | 14-May-2015 | Argentina | Buenos Aires | The Experimentation Center of the Colón Theatre | 120 | Experimental Center of the Colon Theater; Ibermusicas / Iberescena | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Tanztheater |
| 300 | Sunken Garden | Film Opera | What connects the disappearances of a software engineer and a glamorous young socialite, with a neurotic film-maker of dubious credentials and a gullible patroness of the arts? What is the unfolding crime and who is the criminal? Are their shared dreams of a walled garden between life and death – a place where guilt and grief cannot enter – just dreams, or might such a garden be real? And if so, what is the true price of entry? Dealing in bright hoax and dark truth, in patronage and manipulation, in the virtual and the bodily, in the isolation of the broadband age, in the primal impulse to cheat mortality at any cost, Sunken garden is an occult-mystery film-opera by Dutch composer and film and stage director Michel van der Aa, and British novelist David Mitchell. | Barbican Theatre (Michel van der Aa) | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 110 | English | | 0 | > 20 | Michel van der Aa | André de Ridder | | David Mitchell | | Michel van der Aa | Theun Mosk | | | | Michel van der Aa | Theun Mosk | | | 12-Apr-2013 | United Kingdom | London | Barbican Theatre | 1156 | Barbican Theatre | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Gesang, Videokunst |
| 301 | Goud! (Gold!) | | Jacob and his parents are poor. So poor that they cannot even afford a roof over their heads. His father has dug a hole under a tree, where they live. Jacob goes fishing with his father by the sea. One day, Jacob catches quite a special fish. "If you so please, throw me into the sea", says the fish, "throw me in and let me live – I can give you anything you want!" Jacob is so dumfounded that he drops the fish back into the sea. At night, when he can’t sleep, it dawns on him that he should have wished for a pair of shoes. The next day, he goes back to the sea and calls the fish. And, in a flash, a pair of brand-new shoes adorns his feet. Jacob’s parents are cross: why didn’t he wish for something for the whole family, they ask. A house, for example. The next day, Jacob goes back to the sea, and again the fish fulfils his wish. Just as before, the fish grants all of the requests Jacob makes on his parents’ behalf, which become more and more excessive. With each new wish, the fish gets thinner and thinner and the sea rougher and rougher – right until the end ... | Theater Sonnevanck, Deutsche Oper Berlin | Opera | Black Box | 45 | Dutch (German version also available) | | 4 | 1-10 | Leonard Evers | | | Flora Verbrugge, (Flora Verbrugge, German translation) | Brothers Grimm | Annechien Koerselman | Dieuweke van Reij | | | | | | | | 30-Sep-2012 | Netherlands | Enschede | Theater Sonnevanck | 0 | Theater Sonnevanck; Deutsche Oper Berlin | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Instrumentales Theater, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 302 | Robin Hood - zu gut, um wahr zu sein (Robin Hood - to good to be true) | Musiktheater für eine Sängerin und fünf Blechbläser (Music Theatre for female singer and brass) | Legends have the characteristic that they are told anew for many years, and even centuries, and at some point no-one knows any more what the true story was. Such is also true with Robin Hood. Luckily, however, we have a witness who lived at the same time as Robin and really knew how it truly was: Marian, Robin’s great love, can finally describe for us the true story from her own perspective. So, for example, we discover that Robin didn’t fight with a bow and arrow, as shown in many films, but with a variety of wind instruments. Yes, Robin was a musician, and he was such a virtuoso that he could lay robbers low, put down bandits and make young women profess their love with it. But, one thing after another. Marian gets to know Robin when he, with his trumpet, beats away a robber who wanted to steal the jug full of milk collected for her hungry siblings. She is very impressed with the young man, who is courageous, selfless, modest and quiet – but before she could thank him, he has already gone away. But, Love’s arrow has already hit Marian’s heart – Robin is the man of her dreams. Innumerable heroic acts must be performed – and so Robin has almost no time for Marian, and she asks herself, might it be better if there were more Robins, so that one could always have time for her? But no, she loves only one! And as the angry, always drunk Sheriff of Nottingham takes money from a beggar and Marian looks on quite insolently, Robin is once again on the scene, rescuing the donations and Marian’s honour. Marian tells him of her love for him, and Robin is speechless. She kisses him anyway, but then the wild hordes of the King arrive, and Robin must hide himself. Marian bravely confronts the men who want to arrest Robin because he takes from the rich to give to the poor. But the evil troop won’t be dissuaded, and lead Marian away. Alone in her dungeon, her thoughts circle around Robin, and suddenly he’s there – he has been able to play the troop into a deep sleep, and free his love. Now the both of them stand side by side with the poor and give back what was taken from them. And it looks as if the world can be a just and fair place: not just through Superman and Batman, but also through lots of Robins and Marians. | Lucerne Festival (Mike Svoboda, Sonus Brass) | Instrumental Theatre | Black Box | 55 | German | | 8 | 1-10 | Mike Svoboda | | | Manfred Weiss | | | | Nina Ball | Johannes Fuchs | | | Marc Hostettler | | Damir Dantes (Pantomime training) | 7-Sep-2013 | Switzerland | Lucerne | Lucerne Festival | 820 | Lucerne Festival | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Instrumentales Theater, Kinder und Jugendstück |
| 303 | Raud-Ants (Iron Ants) | | "Raud-Ants" is a chamber opera by Kristjan Kõrver an Estonian composer known for his passionate, rhythmic, neo-expressionist music. "Raud-Ants" (Iron Ants) is a" lyrogrotesque" fable in music, which has been composed for the ensemble Resonabilis - for voice, flute, zither and cello. The opera`s musical inspiration came from the 18th century "number opera". The musical story is divided into chapters and the vocal part of the chamber opera is inspired by the technical complexity historic opera arias. The chamber opera "Raud-Ants" is a serious vocal challenge for the singer who carries both the weight of the narrator and several fairy tale characters. The instrumental soloists are also expected to be involved in theatrical activities. The libretto of the opera was inspired by the psychological analysis of the Grimm brothers` fairy tails in Arnold Bittlinger`s book "Origin of Christian Holidays". The main protagonist Raud-Ants is a mysterious wild man, who lives in the deepest of the forests and is responsible for the disappearance of local people. He is captured by a brave hunter and held in the cage at the courtyard of the king’s castle. The king’s young son finds Raud-Ants and they decide to escape together, their destinies now entwined. The opera aims to encourages the listeners onto a journey of contemplating on the mystery of a wild man and making the listener take a moment to look into the mirror asking themselves who (and where) is Raud-Ants? The ensemble Resonabilis (Latin for "ringing, sounding") consists of a unique combination of instruments - a voice, a flute, a cello and a kannel. Kannel is a traditional string instrument known in the Baltic region and Finland under different names and in varying forms. To some extent, a kannel resembles the German zither or the Turkish kanun. Founded in 2002 by Tarmo Johannes and Kristi Mühling, Resonabilis constantly work to extend their repertoire in co-operation with different composers. The opera has earned great recognition in Estonia for both its musical complexity and outstanding stage direction. | Mustjala Festival (Kristjan Kõrver, Ensemble Resonabilis) | Instrumental Theatre | Black Box | 60 | Estonian | | 0 | 1-10 | Kristjan Kõrver | Andrus Kallastu | | Kristjan Kõrver | | Ott Aardam | | | | | | Rene Liivamägi | | | 27-Jul-2013 | Estonia | Mustjala | Mustjala Festival | 200 | Loovüksus NGmO; Mustjala Festival NGmO in cooperation with Saaremaa Opera Days | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Instrumentales Theater |
| 304 | Piya Behrupiya - Shakespeare's 12th Night in Hindi | Hindi Musical | Piya Behrupiya, while carrying forward all the trademark features of popular Shakespeare plays, finds its own niche in this unique adaptation that occupies an inbetween space-between English and regional theatre. With its unique spoken language which is a mongrel version of English, Hindi and Punjabi, the play also places itself in that ‘in between’ space between the rural and the urban, contemporary and folk theatre. The play uses songs and melodies that are part of the oral narrative of rural India from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab as well as includes original compositions by the actors and singers in the group. With musical interludes and riotous disorder, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night has all the drama; A Shipwreck, Mistaken identity, Cross dressing, Unrequited love, High Passion, Sword fights, and finally happy reunions. This sounded a bit familiar! Yes, it was just like a Bollywood blockbuster. So we approached the play accordingly with a mix of folk and light classical music, exaggerated humour, slapstick comedy and fantastic characterisations. This Hindi version of the play by The Company Theatre opened to a sensational response. | The Company Theatre | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 120 | Hindi | | 0 | 11-20 | Gagandeep Singh Riar | | | Amit Nagpal | William Shakespeare | Atul Kumar | | | | | | Manikaran Singh | | | 13-Jul-2015 | India | | | 200 | The Company Theatre | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 305 | Champions of the Sonarverse | | The Champions of the Sonarverse is the ultimate tale of good vs. evil. Set against the backdrop of an an African science fiction adventure, or, "Xi-Fi" (in the Xhosa language, the "X" is pronounced as a "click"), a mysterious hero battles the imperialistic forces of Admiral Anarchy and unites the "primitive" Maluti tribe against this enslaving aggressor. The performance is essentially live musical theatre, incorporating stunning visuals, outrageous costuming and an uptempo soundtrack with strong traditional African storytelling, adapted from a format that has been used for thousands of years amongst the indigenous tribes of Southern Africa. | Gert Besselsen, Yolanda Fryus | Other | Proscenium Stage | 60 | South Africa | | 0 | 1-10 | Gert Besselsen | | | Yolanda Fryus, JC Visser | | Nick Matthews | | | | | | | | | 8-Aug-2014 | South Africa | | | 4000 | InvizaCorp | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
| 306 | Cosima - de liefdesgeschiedenis van Liszts dochter, Wagners vrouw (Cosima - the love story of Liszt's daughter, Wagner's wife) | | A music theatre production by pianist/narrator Christiaan Kuyvenhoven (laureate of the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition) and Gulnara Shafigullina (prizewinner of the International Vocal Competition, Den Bosch) directed by Laurens Krispijn de Boer. Cosima tells the intriguing life story of the daughter of the nineteenth century piano virtuoso Franz Liszt. A lack of fatherly love in her youth leads Cosima to search for her own path to happiness. She knows that she has found her true purpose in life, when she becomes the wife of opera composer Richard Wagner. She devotes herself to his genius, to his soul. But at what price? Through a theatre monologue and music by Liszt and Wagner, Christiaan Kuyvenhoven portraits a determined woman. Cosima is a personal and biographical love story about identity, devotion, justice and power. Cosima has been performed numerous times in The Netherlands, Belgium and The United States (English text) In 2015 Christiaan will perform it in Lichfield and London (UK). | Christiaan Kuyvenhoven | Performance | Black Box | 105 | Dutch | | 0 | 1-10 | Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt | | | Christiaan Kuyvenhoven | | Laurens Krispijn de Boer | | | | | | | | | 10-Oct-2013 | Netherlands | | | 300 | Certo Productions | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musikperformance, Gesang |
| 307 | Alexander - The Great Rock Opera | | Alexander the Great Rock Opera is a new play by Greek composer and director Constantine Athirides. The play is staged in English, with supertitles. The production has a duration of two hours and fifteen minutes and consists of an eight to ten-member live orchestra and a cast of twenty six to twenty eight actors, dancers and singers. The play was first produced by the National Theatre of Northern Greece (N.T.N.G.) and staged in the Royal Theatre of Thessaloniki and in the Athens Concert Hall. It was played to sold out audiences who embraced the show wholeheartedly. The rave reviews by the critics praised the play for its historical integrity, but also for meeting high artistic and entertainment standards. The story starts in the isle of Samothrace a year before the birth of Alexander, where his mother Olympias and the king of Macedonia Philip first met, follows Alexander's life and ends with his death in Babylon, 34 years later. The play succeeds in bringing us closer to the magic, the dream and the human side of Alexander the Great's legend. The principal roles are: Alexander the Great, from age 16 to age 33, King Philip-Alexander's father, Olympias-Alexander's mother, Kaveri Kallasha-the narrator, Hephaestion-Alexander's best friend, Ptolemy, Philotas, Perdiccas-Alexander's friends and generals, Aristotle-the philosopher, Cleitusthe wise general, Laniki-Alexander's nurse and Roxanne-Alexander's wife. Twentyeight actors, singers and dancers that make up the cast, also participate in the chorus as “soldiers”, “dancers”, “priests”, “merchants”, “crowd”, etc. A live orchestra of eight to ten musicians, is placed in the musicians' pit, in the front of the stage. Instruments used: bass guitar, drums, percussion, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, keyboards and synthesizers, flute, clarinet, violin, bouzouki, oud. A simple and easily assembled set is specially designed to meet the requirements of an international tour. The various interior and outdoor scenes (Palaces, temples, battle fields, flea markets, the desert, ect), are mainly supported by back projection. Approximately 240 costumes are used for the show and supertitle projectors provide the lyrics' translation in the language of the hosting country. A high standard of light and sound equipment is required for the needs of the show (provided by the hosting theatre, hired, or transported from Greece). The production team provides detailed technical rider and specialised staff for the running of the show. | Constantine Athirides, National Theatre of Northern Greece | Opera | Proscenium Stage | 118 | English | Greek | 0 | > 20 | Constantine Athirides | Costas Tzounis | | Alexandra Charanis | | Constantine Athirides | Yiannis Metzikof | Ioanna Timotheadou | | Aspa Foutsi | Stathis Mitsios | | | Polixeni Adam-Veleni (Historical supervision) | 23-Oct-2014 | Greece | Thessaloniki | National Theatre of Northern Greece | 600 | CAN productions; National Theatre of Northern Greece | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musiktheater, Musical |
| 308 | Candy Shop | | Opera for 7 performers, acoustic and electronic instruments, video // Extended (Circus) version involves men choir, female drummer and a marching band // Candy Shop is a famous hip hop hit by American rapper 50 cent. Candy Shop is also a name under which artist Lina Lapelyte created a series of performances. Candy shop was a dance project, a film work, a gallery installation, chamber music piece, intervention, provocation, audition and finally it culminated into an opera work involving 7 female performers, drummer, men choir and a marching band. Candy Shop recontextualises West Coast hip hop lyrics, revealing catchy surfaces, gender hierarchies and power dynamics. Candy Shop was coproduced by Counterflows festival in Glasgow and Borealis festival in Bergen and turned into a full length opera performance inviting live contributions by artists Angharad Davies, Anat Ben David, Sharon Gal, Nouria Bah, Heidi Heidelberg and Rebecca La Horrox along Lina Lapelyte herself. Candy Shop has been performed at the venues like swimming pool, roof terrace and concert halls. The piece adopts itself to the different contexts and allows for individual interpretations. Soothing voices, nonlinear stories and well known texts create a strange tension, which can be ignored or taken on. Candy Shop is a celebration reworking the games of power that are embedded in the rap songs, into lullabies, narrating a story about beauty, gender and the mundane. Candy Shop has been performed at the following venues and festivals: Counterflows, CCA Glasgow - April 2013; Arts Foundation Award, New Experimentalists, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London - January 2014; Borealis festival, Bergen - March 2015; Block Universe, London – June, 2015 Picnic Sessions, CA2M - Madrid, July 2015 | Lina Lapelyte | Performance | Black Box, Site Specific also possible | 50 | English | | 0 | 1-10 | Lina Lapelyte | | | | | Lina Lapelyte | | | | | Federico Strate Pezdirc | | | | 4. April 2013 | United Kingdom | Glasgow | | 200 | AC Projects | 2015 | | Music Theatre Now, Musikperformance |
