Bitef

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE

I BEMUS I Opera Christoph Willibald Gluck: ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE Director: Bojana Cvejić Conductor: Premil Petrović Singers: Steve Wächter, Aneta ilic, Ana Sofrenovic Video; Marta Popivoda (direction) and Ana Vujanović (dramaturgy) Design: IgorVasiljev Choreography: Andros Zins-Browne Production: Vladimir Dekic and Nataša Vučković Orchestra of The Faculty of Music Festival Choir prepared by Đorđe Stanković YES-NO RULES Opera was created by an agreement, a contract between artists and intellectuals. It wouldn't hurt if certain opera principles were formulated as a priori rules, in order to outline, if that is possible at all, the aesthetics of this concept. 1. To abolish certain protocol acts: the introduction of the director in the overture, the applause and bow of the singer after singing an aria. 2. There is no situation that should be repeated literally. Even the equivalent musical situation should be repeated with certain difference, even if that is only a minimal difference in mediation or frame. With this I want to suggest that time is not reversible, as the opera would want it to be. Everything that happens is irreversibly lost in the sameness, and differences act upon differences, instead of varying the same as similar. 3. Never walk in the rhythm of music, because that emulates the musical reality as a fiction in presenting an opera. The result looks like this: the opera singers often walk slowly, tiptoeing, so as not to disturb the music. 4. I am looking for the solution to break the uniformity of certain opera elements, such as chorus and orchestra, if they perform as collective bodies, that does not mean that they need to be recognized as one character and one function. 5. When they do not perform, the performers should mix with the audience. Depending on whether they perform or not, they exit (enter the audience) and enter the event. We shall not hide the conventions. The best thing would be to surround them and empty them out by depriving them from their function and beautiful form. Naturally, in this we would reconfigure them into new conventions, but only for one use that is specific to this concept. BOJANA CVEJIĆ Bojana Cvejić (Belgrade, 1975) graduated at the department of musicology and ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. She also received training in opera, theatre and performance in Bayreuth (Das Treffen, 1995), Bochum (International Theatre Academy, 1999), New York (The Kitchen, 2000), Since 1995 she directed independent music theatre performances (REX): Mozart's Bastien&Bastienne (1996), Falla's El Retablo de Maese Pedro (1998), Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat (2000). As a co-founder and member of the theory-performance group Walking Theory (Teorija koja Hoda), she made and performed: Dream Opera (Ideas Campus, 2001, Piran) and A Hyperreal Alegory (2001, SKC, Belgrade). In collaboration with Jan Ritsema she made and performed Verwantschappen (Kaaitheater, Brussels, 2000);TODAYulysses (Spielart Festival,