New Opera days Ostrava (CZE) - „Passion“ (P. Dusapin)

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Music and libretto: Pascal Dusapin

Conductor: Walter Kobera

Directed and choreographed by Ursula Horner

Set and lighting design: Norbert Chmel

Costumes: Melanie Frost

Sound design: Christina Bauer

Cast:

Melis Demiray, soprano (She)

Wolfgang Resch, baritone (He)

PPCM Vocal Ensemble Graz

Beatriz Gaudencia Ramoz, soprano

Laure Catherine Beyers, soprano

Justina Vaitkute, alto

Valentino Blasina, tenor

Martin Šimonovský, baritone

Harald Hieronymus Hein, bass

Holger Falk, artistic direction

Ostrava Band

In Italian original with Czech and English subtitles

Czech premiere, 90'

In cooperation with Neue Oper Wien

He, She and the others... Passion is an opera that reworks the myth of Orpheus, but almost in reverse, so to speak. "I found the opposing passions that I set to music - war, prayer, and even death..." In the Passion, two characters are featured: "He", a man, and "She", a woman. The others are called "Gli altri" [Italian for "The Others"]. There's also a snake, which we don't see, but we know it's around... Like "Lei" [Italian for "She"] and "Lui" [Italian for "He"], who are driven by the constant movement of one passion passing into another, I imagine a type of music in which sound and word can never be distinguished. The passions cling to each other, contradict each other and divide into multiple paths through which fear, joy, pain, terror, desire, ecstasy, sadness, love and anger pass. Passion is a journey. "She," however, refuses to return to the sun because she knows the end of the story. "He", who is touched by everything, but is always preparing for war, allows himself to be buried with her forever "in that dark lair where he knows that the way to return to the sun is closed" (Dante).

Pascal Dusapin (1955) is a French composer. Pascal Dusapin was a student at the Schola Cantorum, also studied plastic arts and art science at the Sorbonne and attended the seminars of Iannis Xenakis. Noted by Edgar Varèse, Franco Donatoni and influenced by jazz, he developed an independent style characterized by the use of microtonality and intense polyphony, while always paying attention to the orderliness of the intervals. His sense of melody led him to capture the intonation of the voice in instrumental notation. His work is interwoven with literary, pictorial and philosophical references. From 2006-2007 he taught at the Collège de France. His works include Lumen (1977), If (1984, premiere commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture), Roméo et Juliette (1988, premiere at the Radio France Festival in Montpellier), To be sung (1993), Perelà (2001, premiere at the Opéra Bastille in Paris), Faust, the last night (2005, premiere commissioned by the Berlin Opera), Uncut (2009).