Notwehr at La Biennale Musica 2022
A commission of La Biënnale di Venezia, in co-production with Studio Minailo, Hermes Ensemble & Muziektheater Transparant. Dedicated to Maria Kalesnikava & all other brave women who lost their freedom fighting for a better world.
What is freedom? And what are you willing to sacrifice it for?
During an illegal protest action, a young activist is arrested. She is locked up for the night together with an older barmaid, who’s been accused of killing her husband. The two women unwillingly share the small prison cell: their forced togetherness starts out on a tense note, but as time passes they open up to each other. First reluctantly and uneasily, then more intimately, they share their fears and hopes. Sheltered by the night, they look back on their lives, and wonder what freedom really is and what they are willing to risk it for. And if the end justifies the means, even if that means breaking the law. Where at first they have no understanding at all for each others actions, they soon find out they have more in common than expected. Their encounter, confined in time and place by their imprisonment, becomes an internal journey that will change them both.
Just like in Adriano Banchieri’s (1605/1623) madrigal cycle Barca di Venetia per Padova (two) people with a very different social background are brought together by coincidence — or is it fate? — and forced to spend a certain amount of time together in a limited space. And just like Banchieri’s travellers, these two women are ‘in the same boat’... Composer Annelies Van Parys’ music enters into dialogue with the Banchieri madrigals, as librettist Gaea Schoeters weaves the old texts into the new libretto and the vocal ensemble paints a picture of the events that led up to incarceration of both women. The two soloists share their thoughts and feelings not only with each other, but also with the audience, as they comment on their own situation — thus turning Notwehr into a performance that is both playful and touching, light and dark. Staged by Sjaron Minailo.
CREDITS
NOTWEHR (50’)
for two female solo voices, vocal and instrumental ensemble
CREATION & CREW
Annelies Van Parys — composer
Gaea Schoeters — librettist
Sjaron Minailo — stage director
Raphael Rene Jacobs — regieassistent
Maarten Warmerdam — lichtontwerp
Patricia Hofstede — costumes
Annik Laruelle & Anne Van Es / Muziektheater Transparant — production manager
CAST
Johanna Zimmer — soprano
Els Mondelaers — mezzosoprano
VENETIAETERNA vocal Ensemble
Silvia Porcellini —soprano
Elisabetta Cuman —mezzosoprano
Miranda Ying Quan —contralto
Giacomo Schiavo — tenor
Francisco Augusto Bois — bass
Francesco Erle — conductor
HERMES ensemble
Karin de Fleyt —flute / bassflute
Stijn Saveniers — violoncello & conductor
Bram Fournier —trombone
Gaetan La Mela — percussion
Translation (German) — Christina Brunnenkamp
PREMIERE
24 September 2022
Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venezia