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 2014, Juliy 10th

 

"L'OLIMPIADE", a game?
Music theatre for seven singers/performers,

two harpsichords, two baroque violins, viola da gamba and live electronics
based on fragments of a libretto by P. Metastasio
A project by Martina Veh, Eva Pons, Nikolaus Witty


Premiere: 10/11 July 2014 at 8 pm, Reaktorhalle, Luisenstr. 37 a

 
Composition/musical concept/harpsichord/Conductor: Eva Pons
Idea/Scenic Concept/Text/Direction: Martina Veh
Dramaturgy/Concept: Nikolaus Witty
Composition/Live-Electronics: Gunnar Geisse

Performers/Singers:
Eric Ander (bass),
Heeyun Choi (baritone),
Marios Sarantidis (baritone),
Yaewon Yun (soprano),
Danae Kontora (high kol soprano),
Ingyu Hwang (tenor),
Nadja Steinhart (mezzo-soprano)

Space: Anika Sönholz
Costume design: Anna Sophie Howoldt
Sound/Video: Miriam Reinhardt/Tom Heinrich
Lighting: Georg Boeshenz
Technique: Otto Schönbach

Copyright Photos: Lioba Schoeneck


Production Management: Susanne Weinzierl

 

 

about the piece:

"War without the thunder of cannons" - that's how George Orwell assessed international competitive sport in 1941. Would we agree with that today?
Sport and war readiness are exemplarily close together in the cinematic images of Leni Riefenstahl, who masterfully transported ideology and enthusiasm in 1936. At all times, the Games raised fundamental questions due to global trouble spots and terrorist threats. So what do the Olympic Games of modern times, an idealistic project of the 19th century, offer: entertainment, fighting spirit or community feelings on demand? Major events, such as those organised every four years by the International Olympic Committee, continue to provide prestige and political dynamite in equal measure. The Olympic idea is not immune to instrumentalisation, be it for the advertising of global corporations or state systems. Against the background of doping scandals, IOC gagging contracts and billion-dollar deals for TV broadcasting rights, what do words like "sportsmanship" mean? Fairness? Health? Freedom?

The image of the hero, a healthy person, a victor raises topical questions even today, individually in the biographies of the athlete in competitive sport as well as in view of the "unsporting" members of society: always close and intimate to the athlete's body, yet separated by insurmountable barriers such as flat-screen TVs, public viewing and stadium architecture. Like the technological perfection of measurement methods in high-performance sport, performance assessment in everyday life is gaining popularity. In 2011, Germany's first Quantified Self group was founded in Munich, whose methods range from "lifelogging, lifecaching, lifestreaming" to "psychological self-assessments" and "medical self-diagnostics" to "personal genome sequencing". Our world would certainly be poorer without the heroic ideal images of success, virility and accomplished youth, but are they really any good as role models?

We invite you to a music-theatrical investigation. As competitive athletes, seven athletes from the Master's programme in opera singing will compete in various disciplines: not least on passages from the libretto "The Olympics" by Pietro Metastasio (1698-1782) and its numerous musical realisations from Vivaldi to Mozart.
Martina Veh and Eva Pons together continue their successful collaboration that began in 2013 with Adolphe Adam's "Nuremberg Doll".

 

Pietro Antonio Domenico Bonaventura Trapassi (* 3 January 1698 in Rome; † 12 April 1782 in Vienna) wrote a libretto in 1734 that no fewer than 17 composers have set to music. The first, besides Antonio Vivaldi (1734 in Venice), was Antonio Caldara (1733), the last Gaetano Donizetti in 1817, albeit in incomplete execution.
We follow parts of this libretto and fill this with the arias, duets and ensembles suitable for the singers from the respective opera materials available to us for Metastasio's libretto.  Musically, we juxtapose this material with a counter-world: a soundscape composition by Eva Pons and Gunnar Geisse.
Scenically, we illuminate two sides of the same coin: the athlete and his spectator. We will develop the scenic basis in this field of tension.


List of composers on whom Metastasio's libretto was based:
Antonio Caldara (28 August 1733, first version), Antonio Vivaldi (1734, Venice, Teatro San Angelo), German premiere 7. December 2007 in Schwetzingen, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (January 1735, Rome, Teatro di Tordinona), Leonardo Leo (1737, Naples), Domenico Alberti (1739), Baldassare Galuppi (1748, Milan), Egidio Romualdo Duni (1755), Johann Adolf Hasse (1756, Dresden), Tommaso Traetta (1758, Verona), Niccolò Jommelli (1761, Stuttgart), Niccolò Piccinni (1761, Rome), Vincenzo Manfredini (1762, Moscow), Antonio Sacchini, (1763, Padua), Josef Mysliveček (4. November 1778, Naples, Teatro San Carlo), Domenico Cimarosa, (10 July 1784, Vicenza, Teatro Eretenio), Giovanni Paisiello, (20 January 1786, Naples, Teatro San Carlo), Gaetano Donizetti, (1817, incomplete) W.A. Mozart Concert Arias on l' Olimpiade.

A production of the Bavarian Theatre Academy August Everding Prinzregententheater
Munich Academy of Music and Theatre

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