Anything for which people enter a stage.
Initiated by Pierre Audi in 2016, the Opera Forward Festival questions the future of musical theatre. The 13-day festival offers (young) creators and singers a chance to explore new avenues. For the second edition, Audi himself directed And You Must Suffer, a music-theatrical version of Bach's St John Passion. This production by Muziektheater Transparant and the early music ensemble B'Roque experienced its Tuesday 28 March...
Boring, all those films, commercials and youtube videos that always use the same (background) music. In a hushed scene or pathetic documentary, the viewer is served Pärt. Exciting sounds like this, and when disaster strikes you hear this. Ordinary people Ah, even film-docu-& TV-makers are like ordinary people and like to reach for the same thing. Dommage! Because there is so much more...
Rewire is once again just around the corner. From 31 March to 2 April, the festival takes place in the city centre of The Hague. The young festival does so with a choice of colours and flavours, (just) outside the mainstream. So: where adventure and the great unknown are actually perks - diametrically opposed to Guus Meeuwis on the main stage....
We have to perform, from an early age. If you don't go along with that, you will be left out. It is the thrust of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, now to be seen at De Nationale Opera directed by Krzystof Warlikowski. The Polish theatre innovator has turned one of the most dramatic operas in music history into a fascinating musical...
'Many opera productions still assume a nineteenth-century vision of the world,' says German composer Moritz Eggert (1965) in the podcast below. 'But art must be relevant to our own times; the answers of then are not the answers of now. Our current problems are largely rooted in our colonial past, in our exploitation of other countries ...
'Thanks to a radio presenter, my grandfather found an entrance to classical music. With my new piece, I, in turn, am paving a path to him.' On Thursday 30 March, Elements by Brechtje (1993) will have its world premiere in the fifth episode of An Evening of Today at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. In this series by the Nieuw Ensemble, conservatory students are given ample opportunity....
Joop Oonk (27) creates dance performances with the Misiconi Dance Company, but not of a standard kind. She also calls it inclusion dance. Dancing with wheelchairs, for example, and then doing it in public spaces. Time for a chat with this extraordinary choreographer. Fortunately, you don't have to be an art barbarian not to know the word inclusion dance. Joop Oonk choreographer, artistic director...
'The smaller the community the narrower the mind,' says Krzysztof Warlikowski. The Polish director makes his debut at De Nationale Opera this month with Alban Berg's Wozzeck. It is the second time he has taken on this iconic work of the 20th century. To this end, he draws on his own experiences during his childhood in Stettin. It is exceptionally...
A dance performance for youth (6+) recently caused a stir. Pupils from groups 5 to 8 of the Islamic Aboe Daoedschool in Utrecht visited IJspaleis (6+) by dance theatre group plan d-. At a dance of two penguins in love, one of the teachers requested that the performance be stopped. This scene was not considered suitable for the pupils, the explanation said. It...
What happens when you take someone's head off? Little, you will say, since the accompanying body dies. But then you are wrong. Because at the first GRIP evening at Utrecht's Theater Kikker, Steven Michel showed that the rest of the body then just takes over. Fascinating to notice how you go from a bare back to...
The first bare female breast I consciously observed in my life was the happily swishing boob of the girl in the Fa advertisement. It must have been sometime deep in the 1970s. The same time the Pacifisties Socialistiese Partij also did something similar with a cow in the background. Now, a good forty years later, the...
While Jan Martens' latest work, The Common People (2016), was at Amsterdam's Stadschouwburg last weekend, Utrecht's Theater Kikker is showing two older hits this week: Sweat Baby Sweat (2011) and The dog days are over (2014). Sweat and Dogdays are blockbusters and have already toured the world. At Kikker, they can now be seen as part of a...
When the Commendatore suddenly rises from his bier in the mortuary, Leporello recoils violently. He smacks painfully against the back wall, as if struck by a gust of hurricane-force wind. This cartoonish image is just one of many hilarious moments in Don Giovanni by the Nederlandse Reisopera. This production was performed after its premiere Saturday 4 March in the...
There is sound; a notion of impotence; a programme without a head or tail; there is power, chatter, compassion; there is nothing but also a vista, blurred image full of action and opposition. Moreover, the language seems a bit overwrought here and there. Of course, incoherent drivel can be cosy, or moving. Under circumstances, meaningfulness may be possible, but it will not...
The National Theatre plays Jeanne d'Arc by Friedrich Schiller and simultaneously retakes Johann Goethe's Tasso. Joris Smit plays in both plays, even the title role in Tasso. We talk to him about German romantics, Sallie Harmsen, the new-fangled National Theatre and the importance of going down on your face. Tasso and Jeanne, Goethe and Schiller. Is German romance...
Both the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the also Royal Concertgebouw seem to be focusing on connection next season. Between young and old, between east and west, between left and right, between culture and press. 'Great that you all came,' says Jan Raes after the presentation of the 2017-18 season. 'The press is under pressure, as is culture,' continues
Maybe God is dead, but His church is alive. At least in Denmark. This has to do with what you might call the Danish paradox of faith: a highly secularised society with a Lutheran Folkekirke (=Volkskerk) supported by a large majority of the population [hints]The American sociologist Phil Zuckerman has commented on this aspect of Denmark (and also a little...
The South Pole does not score high with holidaymakers. But maybe that will change, if at least many children see Ice Palace (6+) by youth dance group plan d-. Renamed 'd-travels' for the occasion, plan d- proposes an adventurous trip. It takes the dancer/tour leader with his billboard some effort to get people excited about it, but already...
A prelaunch of the Opera Forward Festival OFF [hints]From 18 to 31 March at De Nationale Opera (formerly the Muziektheater/Stopera)[/hints], among other venues, was organised last night at Amsterdam's new society Sexyland. I was impressed. Pretty surprising. Opera Nopera Disclaimer: the author of this one is not an opera director. The last two operas I saw were both by Philip Glass (the true...
It was announced today that the North Sea Jazz Club at Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek grounds is bankrupt. This is never good news, for anyone. Not even for those sourpusses who like to complain about North Sea Jazz, the club's namesake. Five years ago, it was big news: the Rotterdam-based North Sea Jazz Festival was going to open a club in Amsterdam. That was...
'Before we start the actual presentation, let me give you some facts & figures,' says Els van der Plas, general director of the National Opera & Ballet. 'No, not the alternative facts,' she adds wittily. The ghost of the US president will be through the Stopera more often this afternoon. Van der Plas recalls the successes that...
I read the biography of Jacob Israel De Haan, Onrust, by Jan Fontijn. Writer and director Gerardjan Rijnders based Salaam Jerusalem on this biography. It is this play, performed by De Nieuw Amsterdam, that really makes me realise how urgent it is to let such an almost forgotten figure as De Haan speak. Jacob Israel De Haan overturned taboos, fought...
Almost a millennium separates nun Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) from Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006). The former created heavenly chants, the latter hammered on a coffin. Yet on Thursday 23 February, they are together at a concert by the Flemish ensembles Het Collectief and Psallentes at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Two reasons why I think that is a wonderful combo...
It will happen to you. At 70, they honour you with a CD box set, five years later you are offered a compilation twice the size. It happened to Dutch oboist Han de Vries (The Hague, 1941), who celebrated his 75th birthday last August. In 2011, his former student Peter Bree collected the radio recordings on nine CDs, this time he filled a...
Shimmering. Wondrous, ferocious. Poetic, powerful. Creative and humorous. Musical. Engaging. Layered. Spirited. A few days after my concert visit, words like these keep bubbling to the surface. And even though the Eef van Breen Group (EvBG) with Chapman for President is a typical case of 'especially go there', 'hear for yourself' and 'cannot be described', I'll make an effort. In the beginning My...
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