New generation at the Opera Forward Festival: ‘Opera will never change if we continue to see it as a staged concert’

The Opera Forward Festival (OFF) of Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam gives a new generation of theater makers the space to explore the genre of opera. In the OFF Carousel, students from Amsterdam art schools can work on their own short opera, which they create from scratch. Four teams of young composers, directors, dramaturges, scenographers and producers will present four free twenty-minute operas at the National Opera on March 8 and 9.

While most operas often revolve around the performers – the great singers, the prima donnas, the conductors – in the Carousel the makers behind the scenes are just as central. How do they shape their mini-operas, what themes do they want to address with their operas, and how do they see the future of the genre?

Sofiia Ennui (22), composer: ‘I want to take musicians out of their comfort zone.’

“Operas have been about love and death for centuries, but now it could be a bit more abstract,” says Sofiia Ennui (22), a master’s student in composition at the Amsterdam Conservatory. “Twenty minutes is of course not a lot to tell a story. In my group we therefore primarily focused on the question: what feeling do we want to convey? We quickly arrived at the word ‘uncanny’: creepy, mysterious. The feeling that comes over you when you are being watched. Or, better yet, if you suddenly see yourself from the side in a reflection.

“We wanted to play with that idea of ​​reflection. The title of our opera, Pull up if i pull up, is a palindrome: you can read it from both sides.” That reflective character is also reflected in the execution. In order to evoke such an unpleasant feeling in the audience, the performers must also experience it themselves. I wanted to take the musicians out of their comfort zone. My background is in jazz music, so I leave a lot of room for improvisation. Classically trained musicians are often unfamiliar with this. There is already a lot of discomfort in the rehearsals.

“I took a lot of inspiration for my composition from the music of Stravinsky. It sometimes seems simple and folkloric, but beneath the surface you often have the feeling that something is not right. I wanted to capture that same essence, but in my own style.”

Pull up if i pull up is Ennui’s first opera. The multidisciplinary character really appeals to her. “For example, my music combines jazz and classical music, but because I will be conducting myself, I am also very concerned with the choreography and what happens on stage. It is becoming increasingly difficult to define genres in opera. That is part of evolution. You need complete freedom to create.”

David Wolfswinkel (26), dramaturge: ‘For the price of an opera ticket you have a few months of Netflix. So Opera has to offer something more.’

Multidisciplinarity is also an important factor for South African David Wolfswinkel (26). He studied choral and opera conducting at the conservatory in Stellenbosch, South Africa, and is now pursuing a master’s degree in dramaturgy at the University of Amsterdam. “By first approaching the genre solely from the music, I got the feeling that something was missing in my education. Opera can still learn a lot from the theater world. How do you tell a story? In our time we have Verdi’s La traviata, but in essence that is nothing different from what people did around the campfire ten thousand years ago. Just a little more extensive.

“For the price of an opera ticket you can also take Netflix for a few months, which allows you to watch unlimited series at home. With an opera we must be able to offer the audience something more. Not just entertainment, but also challenge and connection – after all, you are not alone in a theater hall, you are sharing the moment with all kinds of strangers.”

For Wolfswinkel, connecting is an important part of his work as a dramaturge. “The cliché is that a dramaturge is mainly concerned with the promotional text on the website,” he says. Laughing: “I also happened to write that in this case, but I am mainly concerned with the connections between us as different makers. For example, now I work intensively with the composer to coordinate the music well with what is happening on stage.”

The opera Brb <3 (chat language for ‘be right back‘, ‘I’ll be right back’; <3 is a heart on its side) the electronic opera that Wolfswinkel and his group have created is performed without an orchestra. “We use a complex set of electronic sounds that are mixed and manipulated live. The sound comes from twelve different installations around you. We are still developing a lot in rehearsals, it will be quite exciting how everything turns out in the performances. But it is precisely by taking risks that we may be able to attract a wider audience to operas. We shouldn't take ourselves too seriously, that perpetuates the image that opera is stiff and only for a select audience.”

Fleur van Andel (22), production manager: ‘Our opera is about a youth theme: the housing shortage. Our director is still busy with hospiting.’

“It is good to attract more young audiences to the opera,” says production student Fleur van Andel (22). Her group takes a current theme among young people as the subject of their opera: the housing shortage among students. In Goldilocks in Amsterdam they interweave the well-known fairy tale Goldilocks with personal experiences: “Our director is still busy with hosting during the rehearsal period.

“What do you do when you enter your new house, but the door is already open, there is food in the refrigerator and the bed has already been slept in? Our story is about Goldy, a naive girl who hopes for a super nice apartment in Amsterdam. After a long search she finds a house, but it turns out someone is already living in it.

“An important theme is the safety you can create in your own home. Are you entitled to one? safe space? And what does being a student do to a student? Do you show yourself completely on a hosting evening, and are you still the same person afterwards?

“I find opera very interesting. It may not be exactly my genre, but I’m more open to it now. The threshold can sometimes be high for young people to go to an opera. I think it can help to program more contemporary works. For example, a few months ago I went to Innocence, which felt more like a crossover than a ‘classical’ opera. That appealed to me.”

Nadia Bakhshi (29), director: ‘There has been talk of innovating opera for years, but virtually nothing has changed.’

“It is a shame that modern operas rarely become popular,” says director Nadia Bakhshi (29). “I often find new work much more interesting than interpretation number one million and one Rigoletto. People forget that such works were also new in their own time. We must stop worshiping ashes.”

For Bakhshi, the Carousel is certainly not a first introduction to the genre. “I was eight years old when I first collaborated in an opera. I sang with my children’s choir in a production of Pagliacci. From that moment on I was condemned to opera,” she grins. “Later I went to theater school and focused specifically on opera directing.” In June she will graduate from the Sandberg Institute Amsterdam with the Re:master Opera course, which brings together artists from different disciplines to experiment with the genre.

“I always laugh at the question: what is the future of opera? I have heard a discussion about this every few months for ten years, but virtually nothing has changed in all that time,” says Bakhshi. “There is no future for opera as long as people mainly come to listen to beautiful melodies. It will never change if you continue to see it as a staged concert.

“Our mini-opera Need for [Sing]: The Last Ensnarlamento may be ugly on purpose. It’s not an opera-opera. But what exactly is an opera? The literal translation of the word is simply ‘work’ – as far as I’m concerned, you can apply that much more broadly than within the current framework. I incorporate elements from digital theater and am a big fan of abstraction. In Europe we often want to fit everything into clear boxes, but you don’t always have to understand rationally what is happening in an opera.”

According to Bakhshi, the genre is sometimes considered too sacred. She wants to get rid of that: “When I’m busy, I often hear the voices of my old theater teachers in my head: ‘You really can’t do this.’ But here in the OFF Carousel we can freely go our own way. Coming up with a direction without any limitations, what a dream.”

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