On a sandy beach illuminated by an artificial sun, a group of vacationers in bathing suits rest on lounge chairs, protect themselves from the heat with umbrellas, solve puzzles, talk, read or simply take a nap while a dog runs among them. The banality of leisure is transformed when the music begins and it is revealed that some of the bathers are also singers who transmit a certain melancholy. Like the sirens of Greek mythology with their hypnotic songs make us aware of our destiny.
Created by Lithuanian artists Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė (film and theater director), Vaiva Grainytė (writer) and Lina Lapelytė (composer), “Sun & Sea” was originally released in 2017 and presented in the 2019 Venice Biennale, where he won the Golden Lion. From there began an international tour of cities such as Barcelona, London, New York, Sydney, Los Angeles, Helsinsky and Santiago de Chile. Singular and creative, both in its form and in its content, it will be performed in Buenos Aires, from March 16 to 19, and will inaugurate the 2023 season of the Contemporary Columbus Cycle with four daily performances in space Colon Factorylocated at Av. Don Pedro de Mendoza 2163, in the La Boca neighborhood.
“Beyond the definitions, those who attend are going to find something unusual, close to the opera, close to the installation, novel both in its form and in its content, which broke out as one of the great shows of recent years” , affirms about the importance of this work Martín Bauer, composer and programmer of the aforementioned cycle since its creation in 2012.
Beyond the apocalyptic future, the librettist Vaiva Grainytė told the British newspaper The Guardian: “We never wanted to write an opera about climate change. Not even to judge people who are on vacation. But we did want to think about the paradoxes of how we live”. Thus, among the characters that appear on the scene we find the optimist who discovers underwater beauty in the midst of bags, bottles and colored caps thrown by people. The wealthy and arrogant mother that she shows off because her son knows the seas and oceans of the world. The rich, workaholic man who doesn’t want to become a loser. Even the woman who imagines how 3D printing could replace everything we’ve destroyed, including coral and fish.
Asked if this is an example of how art and culture can play a relevant role in raising awareness about environmental degradation, Bauer answers: “Definitely yes. We are in the middle of an unbearable heat wave. We know what is happening and there are many ways to manifest it. ‘Sun & Sea’ does it in a poetic but forceful way”.
When it is remembered that the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho is one of the most important of the beginning of the 21st century and this proposal started from the artistic union of three women, the inevitable question arises as to whether contemporary music has already given a place of relevance to the female creators or opportunities still need to be opened. Before the consultation, Bauer acknowledges: “The observation is very interesting. It is a phenomenon that happens slowly. In 2019, the legendary Vienna Opera premiered for the first time in its 150-year history, the opera of a woman: the Austrian Olga Neuwirth. Something that in other fields occurred with greater speed, in music it is slower”.
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