NODO 2024: NODO holds up a mirror to our times! Seven premieres of new operas

Publikováno: 19.6.2024

Ostrava, June 19, 2024 –The NODO / New Opera Days Ostrava festival starts in a week, on Wednesday, June 26! The program of seven new productions will take place in Ostrava over five days – on the stage of the Jiří Myron Theatre, the Antonín Dvořák Theatre, the Ostrava Puppet Theatre and the Tatran Hall. A discounted festival pass can be purchased for the complete festival programme. NODO is produced by the Ostrava Centre for New Music and the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre. In addition to five world premieres, the festival will also present operas by well-known figures of contemporary European music – Pascal Dusapin from France and Ann Cleare from Ireland. Czech premieres of their works in co-production with foreign teams will open and close the festival. The NODO Festival does not try to have a unifying theme. It is not even possible today – and in the artistic approach of the young and middle generation, in their authentic perspective, this heterogeneity comes clearly to the fore. What we will encounter at this year's NODO is, in some partial form, a mirror to our times.

Opening ceremony in co-production with Neue Oper Wien

The opening of the festival on Wednesday (June 26) at the Jiří Myron Theatre will be the Czech premiere of the opera Passion by the acclaimed French composer Pascal Dusapin (1955). As a student of art at the Sorbonne, he began attending the seminars of Iannis Xenakis and they had a major influence on his career. Marked by this Greek composer, as well as by Edgar Varèse and Franco Donatoni, he developed his own compositional style, which is most often characterized by a strong inner energy wrapped in a delicate and orderly sonic garment. The opera Passion is a modern reinterpretation of the classical theme of love and suffering. The story's nameless central couple embark on a metaphorical journey towards a goal that proves elusive. During this journey, emotions are transformed, which also define the different stages of the story and the opera itself. The Guardian ranked Passion as one of the twenty-five best musical works of the 21st century in 2019.

The production is co-produced by Neue Oper Wien, an opera company dedicated to the production of contemporary musical theatre. Since its inception in 1994, the company has applied an uncompromising approach to its dramaturgy and has been committed to performing world premieres and rediscovering lesser-known works of the 20th and 21st centuries. The music director of Neue Oper Wien is conductor Walter Kobera, who will also lead the Ostrava production of Dusapin's opera. The Ostravská banda chamber orchestra will perform together with singers from the PPCM Vocal Ensemble Graz. The main roles will be played by soprano Melis Demiray and baritone Wolfgang Resch. The director of the production is Ursula Horner.

Ann Cleare for the first time in Ostrava

The festival concludes on Sunday (June 30) at the Antonín Dvořák Theatre with the Irish artist Ann Cleare (1983), winner of the Ernst von Siemens Foundation Composer Prize and a sought-after artist, who is in Ostrava to oversee only the second production of her opera The Little Lives. The work was written in 2022 and in the same year the opera had its world premiere at the prestigious Munich Biennale.

The opera The Little Lives takes the audience to a park in a small Scottish town, where one day five characters are trapped. The sudden situation becomes increasingly escalated, and over several tense hours, frustrations, desires and pains gradually surface. Tensions rise and hope disappears in sight. In this almost "Kafkaesque" situation, the question of whether the people present are prisoners of the park or of themselves is also urgently offered. The work explores the influence of powerful propaganda on a domestic and national level, the tensions between gender roles, the basic stability of human needs or the role of national identity. Jiří Nekvasil will direct the new production for NODO. The main roles will be played by almost the entire original Munich cast: countertenor Christopher Robson, soprano Peyee Chen, baritone Peter Brathwaite, mezzo-soprano Truike van der Poel and tenor John Humphrey. Ostravská banda is conducted by Bruno Ferrandis.

Five world premieres

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