Premiere of Cabaret at the Opera on 13 March
News публикувана на: 09.03.2018
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On 13 March at 7 pm in the new chamber Stage 234 /Stage in the Pocket/ of Opera Stara Zagora will be the premiere of Cabaret at the Opera - with three contemporary chamber operas presented in a different setting.Directed by Morten Roessen / Denmark /, conducted by Anthony Armore / Austria /, set designer Zlatna Mihaylova, choreographer Romina Slavova, featuring soloists, ballet and orchestra of the State Opera - Stara Zagora.
The three chamber operas are by the German composers Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith - two emblematic names from the world music world, unfortunately - not so well known in Bulgaria. "Mahagonny" and "The Seven Deadly Sins" are chamber operas by Kurt Weill, based on the libretto by the great playwright Berthold Brecht - an outstanding German artist. Their work together played a huge role in the development of a new theatrical aesthetic in the 20th century. Not without significance is the still incredibly topical message of these works,whose face is a sharp social caricature of the society of consumption.
"Forward and Backward was written by Paul Hindemith, one of the most important German composers of the 20th century.
" Little Mahagonny" was first produced at a new German Chamber Music Festival in Baden-Baden on 17 July 1927. Brecht himself was the director. Mahagonny is a short, epic play that simply shows the irresistible decline of the existing social order.
" Forward and Backward" is an opera-sketch that Paul Hindemith wrote for a collection of operatic miniatures presented on 17 July 1927 at a music festival in Baden-Baden. The work lasts only 12 minutes. The action, as in a diabolical palindrome,develops forwards and then backwards and forwards. A tragedy unfolds,which includes jealousy, murder and suicide.All this is repeated in reverse order, and so the work has a happy ending!"The Seven Deadly Sins" is Kurt Weill's first work after his escape from Germany. And this time the composer collaborated with Bertold Brecht to create this "opera-ballet", in which the main character Anna is presented with two performers - a singer /Anna I/, who shows the external features of the heroine, and a dancer /Anna II/, the embodiment of her inner character.
The opera tells the story of a girl who leaves home to find work in various large American cities, hoping to earn enough money for her family to build a house on the banks of the Mississippi River. Along the way, she is "tempted" by each of the seven biblical sins. Brecht turns things around. He shows them not as moral transgressions but as episodic commentaries on the conflicts between morality and money that inevitably arise in a capitalist society.
Conductor Anthony Armoret can equally be described as an Italian conductor and an American conductor. He lives in Austria and works with various symphony orchestras and opera houses around the world. His fruitful collaboration with renowned conductors Jorma Pannula and Gheorghiu Stanciu dates back to 2001, with whom he has organized various Masterclasses in orchestral conducting of works by Jan Sibelius, Carl Nielsen and Johannes Brahms and selected opera titles from the standard repertoire - La Traviata, Il trovatore, Rigoletto, Carmen, The Barber of Seville, Masque Ball, Lucia di Lammermoor, La Boheme and Nabucco.
In the period 2001-2004 Anthony Armore was the permanent guest conductor of the Opera in Constanta , Romania. Constanta is the headquarters of the Black Sea Philharmonic, of which he is artistic consultant and permanent guest conductor during the period 2001-2003. Prior to Anthony Armore's long-term engagements with the Constanza Opera, he was Music Director of the Oregon Chamber Orchestra, USA. He conducts standard repertoire as well as contemporary composers and chamber operas. In 1990, Anthony Armoré founded the Ernest Boch Music Festival and the Yakwina Orchestra (now the Newport, Oregon Symphony Orchestra) based in Newport, Oregon. He served first as assistant and then as permanent guest conductor of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra (Portland,Oregon). Trained as a conductor, violinist, cornetist, pianist, and musicologist, Anthony Armoré specialized in orchestral conducting with conductors of the stature of Jorma Panula at the Sibelius Academy of Music, Helsinki, Charles Brook (Hancock School for Conductors and Orchestrators), and Elizabeth Green - University of Michigan.
Director Morten Roessen /Dania/ is working for the second time at the Stara Zagora Opera House. On March 22, 2017, he staged three contemporary opera titles here. The composers Enrico Travaglione, Nicola Strefelini and Carlo Fiorini were the winners of an International Competition for writing a chamber opera for the Stara Zagora State Opera, which was announced in 2015 and successfully concluded in September 2016. Morten Roessen was chosen to direct their one-act works, and the performances were conducted by the Rome-born but London-based distinguished conductor and composer Dimitri Scarlato.
This is also the second time Zlatna Mihailova has worked with the Opera's artists. In April 2015, she took part in a concert with the Orchestra of the Opera. Zlatna Mihaylova was the author of the costumes for the performance "The Phantoms of the Musical" of the State Opera-Stara Zagora. She has worked on several plays at the Geo Milev State Theatre - Stara Zagora, she has done a stint as a French director at the National Sofia Opera, she has made props for musicals in Hamburg, she has made costumes for an opera-theatre yacht in Sicily. She has behind her a number of unconventional, diverse, interesting free projects. Zlatna was born in Stara Zagora, was one of the Mayors of Mladá Zagora in the recent past, graduated from Romain Rolland High School.
Romina Slavova is a prima ballerina at the Stara Zagora Opera House, holds a master's degree in ballet pedagogy from the Academy of Ballet Theatre, Plovdiv. She has choreographed and sculpted numerous performances of the Stara Zagora State Opera - the operas Otello, Dido and Aeneas, The Postman of Longhumot, The Barber of Seville, The Servant Mistress, the operettas Croquefer and Dragunet, children's shows.
Soloists.