David Ryan, Vít Zouhar, Rocc: I-ME – Festival OPERA
Concept, music, sound art, live performance: David Ryan, Vít Zouhar
Concept, production: Rocc
Starring
Katja Konvalinka – vocals
Sanja Nešković Peršin – performer
Jaroslav Topinka – sound
Co-production with the Slovenian Chamber Music Theatre
A research and experimental opera project that seeks to explore new musical theatre forms and open the boundaries of what opera can be.
The project takes as its starting point the use of texts and words in the development of early operas of the late Renaissance, whose librettos drew heavily on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. This is the fourth part of the free opera cycle ECHO-Metamorphoses that the director Rocc launched in 2015 together with Vít Zouhar (Prague Quadrennial 2015) and on which Natalia Ushakova (Festival Opera Prague, 2017) and ISHA Trio (Prague Quadrennial 2019) collaborated.
The complex history of early operas and their intellectual background in attempts to modernize Greek drama according to historical principles remains a fascinating puzzle for contemporary practice. The libretto itself, written in various living, dead, and artificially constructed languages, draws on the mythological theme of Echo and incorporates numerous epigrams from the famous Anthologia Graeca of the 7th century BC. These epigrams offer us tremendous insight into the evolution of poetry and its intertwining with memory and time. The literal translation of the word “epigram” is “inscription,” and these inscriptions serve as prompts for travelers along the way. They are aphoristic statements about life in general, reflecting on the human condition, meditations on loss, and documenting desire and sexual whims, as well as playful uses of words and concepts, but above all, the play of time itself.
The grand myths remain present throughout the anthology but are confronted by the realities of everyday life. Today, they function as found objects – topics that are often distant and off-putting, yet also strangely close and present. Research into ancient music has surprisingly led to the exploration of melody and the invention of simple scalar progressions. The sound investigates the possibilities of something entirely elemental, thereby opening up new acoustic, vocal, and spatial opportunities. The composition contains a number of fragments that can be observed like a mosaic. I-ME reflects stories, events, and destinies—what has happened cannot be forgotten as long as the inscriptions remain legible. And when they are forgotten, they will still be present through their absence. The inscriptions are boundary markers that delineate the territories of thoughts, laws, beliefs, and actions. The I-ME project, therefore, is an echo of the unforgettable.
Premiere: December 8, 2022, as part of Opera Schrattenbach Festival
Approximate running time 60 minutes, no intermission
In English and Esperanto
