Mini operas II
Music: Matej Kastelic, Tilen Slakan, Iztok Kocen, Federica Lo Pinto, Matic RomihLyrics: Matej Kastelic, Jakob Barbo, Iztok Kocen, Nejc Potočan, Katja Goreča
Co-production: Academy of Music and Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television, University of LjubljanaPremière: Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest 3 February 2019, Theatre Divadlo na Orlí, Brno 11 February 2019, Kino Šiška, Ljubljana, January 20, 2019
Director: Eva Hribernik
Conductors: Ana Erčulj, Gašper Salobir, Iztok Kocen, Črt Lasbaher, Simon Dvoršak
Dramaturge: Katja Gorečan
Set designers: Katja Gorečan and Nastja Mezek
Costume designers: Katarina Šavs and Nina Čehovin
Lighting designer: Anže Kreč
Photographers: Manca Kocjančič and Nastja Mezek
From the directing concept:
“The project brings together five short operas that differ in content, genre and style. From the origin of thought in the opera Anatomy of Thought, which gives no precise time and place of action, the journey continues to the village inn in the opera The Old Man Is Always Right. Here we follow the simple and folksy goings-on of the younger and older residents, who, in their quest for love, bear the stories of the past and future. The question of physical and bodily immobility is raised in the opera Disposable, where we perceive in the dialogue between the Prostitute and the Doctor that with the collapse of the physical body, which is superfluous and interchangeable, all moral condemnation and judgement disappears. The next opera, Lullaby in a Room Without Windows, presents the absurdity of what happens in a hospital where no one ever dies and death is like a state of eternity. The only thing that can happen to people in a hospital is that their limbs are cut off. In the last opera, Gaja, moving between the visible and invisible worlds, we are on the verge of the collapse and violent destruction of the world represented by an imaginary forest.”
From the reviews:
“The Mini Operas project is a product by the creative and highly motivated students of two arts academies in Ljubljana, the Academy of Music and the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television. In their creative drive, the instrumentalists approached the project on their own initiative, while Eva Hribernik took on the direction. She staged each opera in its own way but maintained a leading dramaturgical thread throughout the production. As a result, the audience feels a sense of wholeness after the performance, even though the operas are very different.” (Nena Bogataj, GLASNA, 29 March 2019)
“It is the darkness, the silence, the tension, the gong, the play of light and shadow that form the common thread of the performance from the very first moment. If I did not notice that in the first operas, it was very present this time, even despite the music pieces, lasting up to 15 minutes, being very different in style, genre and content. We impatiently await Mini Operas III.” (Tanja Benedik, SIGIC, 22 February 2019)