Waken: a one-woman chamber opera

24/04/2018

Time is an illusion... this is a beautiful perspective of how Elisabetta experiences the 'waiting for her father' who we can hear but not see.

17/07/2017

Beautiful but sad.

24/06/2017

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

TS ELIOT

From people and plants to cars and buildings, time eventually wears everything out. Sometimes it takes weeks or months, other times it can take years or decades, but eventually everything begins to crumble beneath the unstoppable pressure of Father Time.

08/03/2017

Le dernier poème

J'ai rêvé tellement fort de toi,
J'ai tellement marché, tellement parlé, Tellement aimé ton ombre,
Qu'il ne me reste plus rien de toi.
Il me reste d'être l'ombre parmi les ombres
D'être cent fois plus ombre que l'ombre
D'être l'ombre qui viendra et reviendra dans ta vie ensoleillée.

(English translation by Emily Ezust)
I dreamed so obsessively about you,
I walked so much, said so much,
Loved your shadow so much,
That nothing more remains for me of you.
It remains to me to be the shadow among shadows
To be a hundred times more shadowy than the shadow
To be the shadow that will come again and again into your sun-drenched life...

09/12/2016

An interesting article on sleep paralysis.

Imagine, if you will, this scenario. It is the middle of the night, and you are sleeping. Suddenly, you awaken, but you cannot move. Your eyelids will not open, and you cannot move your arms and legs. You cannot even move your fingers and toes. Breathing is difficult. If feels like there is somethin...

21/11/2016

A beautifully sad poem about anonymity and loneliness.

Look: I am building absence

15/11/2016

Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

02/05/2016

Michel van der Aa's two one-woman multimedia chamber operas - One (Barbara Hannigan) and Blank Out (Miah Persson). One being a nightmarish loss of identity, and the other a fragmented piecing together of a traumatic event. Both set in that 'in between' place.

01/05/2016

James Barrie's Peter Pan is constantly reset as a children's story, while deeper darker implications remain unexplored. Such a beautiful piece still yet to find it's deeper expression after 110 years.

Anyway, inspiring for us.

22/04/2016

Felipe Ignacio Noriega and Irini Tzanetoulakou - which one do you prefer?

21/04/2016

This is a prototype of an earlier work premiered in 2010 via the opera collaboration between CvA and the Theatre School Amsterdam initiated by Javier López Piñón, Anthony Heidweiller and Richard Ayres. I always thought this work had potential and now we have the opportunity to make it into something great.