Operação: Orfeu, Hotel Pro Forma

Operação: Orfeu, pela companhia dinamarquesa Hotel Pro Forma, é uma ópera visual inspirada no conhecido mito do músico apaixonado que desce ao mundo dos mortos para recuperar Euridice.



Centro Cultural de Belém, 25 e 26 de Janeiro de 2008



Uma atmosfera única conseguida através da cenografia, da luz e dos efeitos visuais, num feliz encontro com a música de Bo Holten, John Cage e a famosa ária Che farò senza Euridice, a recordar a ópera Orfeo e Euridice de Christoph Willibald Gluck.



Concepção e direcção: Kirsten Dehlholm
Música: Bo Holten, John Cage, Christoph Willibald Gluck
Arranjos:Bo Holten
Libreto: Ib Michael
Cenografia: Maja Ravn
Concepção de luz: Maja Ravn, Jesper Kongshaug
Desenho de luz: Jesper Kongshaug
Som: Anders Jorgensen
Figurinos: Annette Meyer
Coreografia para solo: Anita Saij
Dramaturgia: Claus Lynge
Tradução: Marianne Harpsøe Correia

Hotel Pro Forma é apoiado pelo Danish Arts Council, Committee for the Performing Arts.
Encomendado e co-produzido pelo Arts Festival Week 1993

Reposição co-produzida por Latvian National Opera, Latvian Radio Choir, Bikubenfonden, Danish Arts Council, Committee for the Performing Arts e Hotel Pro Forma

Promete um grande espectáculo...

Foi interessante.

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concept

Operation : Orfeo is a musical work that draws on the basic principles of visual art. A reconceptualisation of the opera genre. Causal and dramaturgic sequence in libretto and music is replaced by a series of tableaux and compositions informed by purely visual and auditive principles rather than by dramatic modes of narration. The performance is a visual interpretation which comes to rediscover the basic elements of traditional opera.

The myth about Orpheus' journey to the underworld is not retold in a direct way. Rather, it serves as a dramaturgical device with the classical division of the myth into three parts informing a series of images translated into a contemporary scenic language. It hints at the mythic narrative without ever illustrating it. The three parts correspond with the stages in which the events of the mythic narrative unfold: the descent, the ascent and the loss - visualised in images of light and shadow, flat surface and depth.

The libretto is a sensuous flow of words performed as symphonic a capella singing. Like a glowing poem it dives into the fluid, colourful and shady underworld of the ocean to re-emerge at the Roof of the World in the middle of a death cult being performed.

The music of the performance creates a play of difference through oppositions that entice and illuminate each other: the tenuous and the voluminous, the sporadic and the unifying, the soloist and the chorus.

The performance is simple like a surgical incision and complicated like major surgery.

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'OPERATION : ORFEO demonstrates the metamorphosis of opera in the 21st century in its most positive
way. The performance is transformed by the Latvian Radio Choir into a manifesto of the most powerful musical instrument  the human voice. The Danish dancer Lisbeth Sonne Andersen sculpts her fluid motions. Operation : Orfeo is a world class show.'
- The Independent Riga (LV)

OPERATION : ORFEO, which has played over 70 times in more than 20 countries, is considered by many to be a modern masterpiece in both the operatic and experimental performing arts.

The myth of Orpheus' journey through the underworld to retrieve his love Euridice is told through the poetry of Danish author Ib Michael, with music by John Cage and Bo Holten. Light creates staged images that transform into patterns, lines, shadow landscapes and the blue-green ocean of the underworld. An endless staircase is the stage where 13 singers and a dancer create images that deceive the eye of the beholder, mixing 2 and 3D perception into a mythological operatic tour.

OPERATION : ORFEO is song and image in darkness and light, both shallow and deep. As simple as a surgical incision and as complicated as an entire operation.

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text

Extracts from the libretto by Ib Michael (Translated by Barbara Haveland).
This libretto comprises two texts by Ib Michael: The indented passages are taken from his collection of poems, Himmelbegravelsen (Sky Burial). The remainder of the text was commissioned for this production.

Wind through to one face in a crowd,
dark with forgetting -

An underwater current
sets her hand to waving
and she sways in silhouette

She is but one drowned dancer
among many
who have forsaken choreography
and have entered into silence
where the sunlight sails
on a film of mineral salts

As yet still caught inside your lungs,
a pocket of air confined by your ribs
As yet the telegraph still crackles
within its own closed circuit where

the gills of the heart palpate
as yet her name is still dawning on your lips

- echo of that name
you bound in music
e'er she fell
from your face -

With your vast mouth you colour
you colour the water red
as you mime her name
and feel the salt in your eye.
You snatch at silhouetted forms
Only to be brushed by riven silk
brushed a shiver from the soul
as the shoul turns away -

You raise her up from the ocean floor
dancing

with face averted

she pitches, heavy as a sleeper
in your arms

Strung out in the air
between circling silhouettes
with wind
rushing through feathers

The two leading birds
hold everything spellbound
the sun refuses to rise
the day hangs at rest in its heaven
no shadows race
across the mountain tops
they too await
the butcher's cry

As he cuts off the head
the faintness again
face to face with features
with eyes and an open mouth
so staggeringly weightless
without its body

--------

According to legend
a myrtle wreath bobs off into the dusk
the concert grands play, sable-sailed
with masts by the hundred the ships go down

--------

On the shoreline a seagull's raucous cry
sounds across white stones
sleep and forgetting in symphony
capsuled in amber caskets

Underneath I am blue
and hard as a Rock

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