In one year the AKO and Libris prizes? The front pages of newspapers would be full of it, not to mention the dozens of pages in book supplements. Composer Michel van der Aa has to make do with small announcements, tucked away in newspapers, while receiving the Grawemeyer Award and the Mauricio Kagel Music Prize is a never-before-seen double.
Together, the prizes are good for one and a half tons, unheard of in music circles, but much more important: where AKO and Libris are limited to the Dutch-speaking world, the Grawemeyer Award and Mauricio Kagel Music Prize are highly prestigious prizes worldwide. And then his new opera Sunken Garden also premiered in April.
Not in the Netherlands, but in London. Libretto? Written by David Mitchell, from Cloud Atlas fame - and of the Enschede fireworks disaster opera Wake at the Nationale Reisopera. And as we expect from Van der Aa by now: with electronics and filmed images that complement and enhance the live act. But this time in 3D. And, of course, directed by Van der Aa himself.
In September 2003, Guus Mostart, then intendant of the touring opera, extracted Van der Aa's chamber opera One to Enschede for the now defunct Enschede Music Festival and expressed a desire to work with the composer to bring a new opera nationwide. After the huge success of After life (seen in our country only in Amsterdam in 2006 and 2009) would do exactly that with Sunken Garden. After its premiere in London and three performances as part of the Holland Festival, the opera would tour the Netherlands.
Zou.
The more than sixty per cent cuts imposed by Zijlstra on the National Reisopera forced it to drop out. Sad for lovers of modern opera who don't always want to travel to Amsterdam, sad for the Reisopera, but also very annoying for Van der Aa, who had to look for new co-producers - with only the Holland Festival and the English National Opera, the funding could not be raised. And no, the costly filming in 3D did not help with that.
And this at a time when Van der Aa had just invested just about all his savings in his own record company - Disquiet Media - and streaming concerts to living rooms in an innovative and highly interactive way. A significant part of the prize money he just won will therefore probably be reinvested by Van der Aa himself in new productions.
Fortunately, he found partners in Lyon and Toronto for Sunken Garden, which means the opera will premiere at the Barbican on 12 April and be seen in Amsterdam on 3, 4 and 6 June. But sadly not throughout the Netherlands.
Pity?
Yes, because although Van der Aa's own description already makes you curious, the first trailer promises a lot. A lot.
"What connects the disappearances of a software developer and a glamour girl to a neurotic filmmaker and a female patron? What crime comes to light and who is the criminal? Are their shared dreams of a walled garden between life and death - a place where guilt and grief cannot enter - just dreams or could such a garden really exist? And if so, what would be the price of admission?"
Michel van der Aa - Sunken Garden. Barbican Theatre, London, 12 to 20 April; Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam 3, 4 and 6 June (Holland Festival)
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