AOC is pleased to announce the independently juried finalists for the upcoming Creators in Concert Event, held in partnership with OPERA America’s New Works forum.
AOC & OPERA America – Creators in Concert: Canadian New Works
January 9, 7pm
Marc A. Scorca Hall
OPERA America’s National Opera Centre
330 7th Ave 7th Floor, New York, NY 10001, United States
In alphabetical order, by producer
Julia Dawson – Obscura Nox
Mathilde Côté – La nuit est ma femme
re:Naissance Opera – Eurydice Fragments & Inferno: A Hip Hop Opera
Soundstreams – Garden of Vanished Pleasures
Julia Dawson – Obscura Nox
“Obscura Nox” explores themes of isolation, the relationship between perception and reality, and society’s morphine-drip addiction to our screens. In this modern retelling of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, a woman is cloistered in a prison of her own making until a mysterious stranger shows her a way out. Featuring Mozart’s Exsultate, Jubilate (KV 165) and new music by Iranian-Canadian composer Iman Habibi with original Latin text by Elin Rummel, this 26-minute “création lyrique” is a combination of classical music and narrative film.
https://www.juliadawsonopera.com/obscura-nox
Mathilde Côté – La nuit est ma femme
La nuit est ma femme is a chamber opera based on poems, novels, manuscripts and notes by Jack Kerouac. It focuses on Kerouac’s French-canadian origins and the impact it had on his identity, his personal language and quest. It opposes Jack, the famous American writer who speaks English and wants to go faster and further on, and Jean-Louis, actual birth name of Kerouac, the French-canadian who lives with his mother and wants to write his great work in French. Two voices sing in both Jack and Jean-Louis’s heads: Gabrielle, Kerouac’s mother, and La Nuit, a dark yet kind spirit. Through the night, they will help Jack and Jean-Louis to become one man again, at peace with himself because his heart has been heard at last.
“La nuit est ma femme” has been released as an album in 2022 and is now ready to be staged and premiered.
https://www.lafabriqueculturelle.tv/capsules/12933/la-nuit-est-ma-femme
re:Naissance Opera – Eurydice Fragments & Inferno: A Hip Hop Opera
Inferno is a new hip-hop opera in development that blends hip-hop, rap, beat boxing, sampling, R&B, and contemporary opera in celebration of IBPOC voices. The story reimagines ‘Dante’s Inferno’ as a feminist, anti-establishment, anti-collonial allegory, with the story’s framed layers of Hell representing oppressive systems of power. By analyzing the presence of Paradiso on this historical work, and by pairing opera’s high stakes and emotional richness with hip-hop’s text driven, poetic aesthetics, this musical fusion will ultimately culminate in an illustration of paradise for IBPOC people and communities.
Eurydice Fragments is a musical-theatrical work co-commissioned by re:Naissance Opera and Arkora that will be co-created over several development phases with a unique team of multidisciplinary writers, performers, musicians, creative technologists and immersive theatre designers.
https://nac-cna.ca/en/creationfund/project/eurydice-fragments
Soundstreams – Garden of Vanished Pleasures
“Garden of Vanished Pleasures” is a staged song cycle, an emotional journey inspired by the life and work of English filmmaker, artist, and queer rights activist Derek Jarman. Conceived by U.K./Canadian director Tim Albery, it blends the music of two brilliant composers, Cecilia Livingston and Donna McKevitt, and includes the use of high-quality projections and digital techniques.
Considered one of the most important independent filmmakers of the late 20th century, Derek Jarman eventually fell victim to the AIDS epidemic. As AIDS took his friends one by one and he faced an increasingly uncertain future, Jarman discovered his own form of hope, resilience, and solace in his garden by the sea. These universal themes – hope, resilience, solace, equity – continue to resonate even more so today.
https://soundstreams.ca/events/garden-of-vanished-pleasures/