2024-07-11 20:54:10
Based on the desperate act of the “first Czech terrorist” Jaromír Balda, who caused the collision of two trains with a tree and wanted to blame the accident on Muslims, an opera called When Everyone Will Be There was created. Although it explicitly names the political party SPD, which the senior helped before his arrest, it follows the story of a fictional family where communication is a bit difficult and one member decides to commit a drastic act.
The work of a trio of young authors, including the composer Haštal Hapka and the artists Vilma Bořkovec and Magda Jiřička Stojowska, had its world premiere last week at the New Opera Days Ostrava biennial. Except for a few small things, the successful production calls for reruns.
Since 2012, the opera show has functioned as a counterpart to the even more ambitious Ostrava Days of New Music, which rotates every two years. The organizers reach out to young authors, they also bring new operas from abroad to the Czech Republic, and from time to time they deserve the performance of important works from the past, which have so far been missing from local stages. Two years ago it was Luigi Nono’s Prometeo, and even earlier works by György Ligeti, John Cage and Salvatore Sciarrino.
The constant of the event, which this year lasted five days and took place mainly in Ostrava theaters, is often a very loose concept of the genre. The artistic director of the festival, composer Petr Kotík, indicated this in the program brochure, according to whom almost no contemporary author “deals with the idea of traditional opera”. However, working with singers, orchestra and choir continues to appeal to composers, and few turn down the offer.
Even the twenty-seven-year-old Haštal Hapka, who has so far written almost exclusively instrumental music, did not refuse. He searched for a long time for the way to his first opera. At first, as a trained phonetician, he thought that he would create his own language, eventually he invited opera director Vilma Bořkovec and theater actress Magda Jiřička Stojowska to collaborate. The choice of musical instruments is remarkable – he composed a one-act opera for a jazz combo, a string quartet and an ensemble of actors rather than singers.
Lots of ideas
The opera, which the audience saw in the Jiří Myron Theatre, invites us into an ordinary living room. A family of five indulges in more or less dull Sunday activities. However, a bad foreboding hangs in the air, personified by a policewoman who reads from the investigation file. The perpetrator had good relations, the relatives had no idea.
In the foreground is the author of the opera Haštal Hapka. | Photo: Martin Popelář
However, the senior maintained more intense contact than with his family with the fictitious politician Váňová from the SPD party, who also appears on stage. The role of this stiff and brooding lady, already played with gusto by the mezzo-soprano Alžběta Vomáčková, is the only one traditionally sung. Otherwise, the characters tend to speak, which is why instead of singers, they were personified by theater actors and, rarely, musicians. They sing at one point, even though the classical choir does not feature in the opera.
The author names these artistic decisions as “groping in the differences between stage music and the author’s opera”. Rather, it is a collective stepping out of the comfort zone – the production features jazz players who are not used to opera, and the actors rarely have to heed the conductor’s instructions. It’s not every day, either, that listeners hear a performance mixing string quartet chords in micro-interval proportions with experimental jazz surfaces and guitar songs like from a tramp songbook.
Hapk’s broad creative scope to some extent reflects his listening preferences. In a questionnaire for Full Moon magazine, he mentions classics, alt-rock formations, jazz and songs by Wabi Daňek, Dan Bárta and his father Petr Hapka.
In the course of the three-quarter-hour opera, the author hints at many diverse genres, which, moreover, hold together very well during the Ostrava premiere. The glue is great musical ideas of all kinds, which Hapka clearly has to offer. Nevertheless, it does not stick to them, it always moves to the next ones with ease. In this respect, it was a very desirable addition to the festival, which otherwise often features works based on a single concept or monothematic structure.
In the picture from the opera Až tu váci budo, Danny Takieddin as Peta, Viera Pavlíková as Grandma, Anežka Matoušková as Johana and Zbigniew Kalina as Father. | Photo: Martin Popelář
Haštal Hapka engaged young musicians in the project, especially from the jazz department of Prague’s HAMU. Klára Pudláková plays the double bass with clarity, her brother Jan Pudlák sits at the keyboards. Drums and percussion are provided by Antonín Procházka and Jakub Švejnar, who occasionally also “plays” the typewriter – this is when the police investigator describes the perpetrator’s family background. In contrast, Procházka has at its disposal a so-called kofon, a special tunable vibraphone made by the Czech composer Jan Krejčík, settled in France.
Pudlák and Švejnar work together in the jazz trio Pudlax, but that is probably not the only group in which the musicians have met on stage.
There is also a brass section: Martin Debrička plays the alto and tenor saxophones, at one point even both at the same time. Hapka entrusted the trombone and tuba parts to Jan Jiruch, whom they also know as classmates from the composition department. The colorful sound of the jazz combo is supported by guitars and banjo performed by Jan Bára. The singer Anežka Matoušková, who is also the co-author of that guitar song, appears in an unexpected acting role – if we don’t count the house bell played on the vibraphone, it is the only so-called diegetic number in the entire opera, that is, music originating from the fictional world of the characters and the story.
Haštal Hapka joined forces with creative musicians, almost all of whom compose or improvise themselves. The score often leaves them free space for soloing or various types of “ordering”. The part of the string quartet is a little more specific, and its smooth harmony with the jazz combo was monitored by Hapko during the composition itself, and especially by the conductor Patrik Kako during the premiere. He is also active as a composer and empathetically adopted Hapk’s musical world.
That the opera ended up in good hands was shown immediately by the prologue, when all the members of the string quartet, namely Anna Romanovská Fliegerová, Tomáš Vilím, Juraj Madari and Claudia Loyer Vaquerizas, excelled in technically demanding consonances. Not everything came out 100 percent interpretatively, which self-critical musicians unwittingly admitted in post-performance debates. All the more now they have the will to pick up on the shortcomings on any other opportunities.
Anežka Matoušková as Johana, Viera Pavlíková as Grandma, Danny Takieddin as Péti, Zbigniew Kalina as Father and Vladislav Georgiev as Grandfather. | Photo: Martin Popelář
Harmful in the forest
The work on the border between opera and theater is first and foremost a well-told story, which does not lack tension, exaggeration, compassion and sadness. Interweaving a Sunday family lunch with a strange case leads to an ambiguous point, resonating with current social issues and collective fears.
The energetic Peta, played by Danny Takieddin, lists superheroes while running around the room and punching the air. Does he have some kind of dark aggression in him that he intends to vent in a tragic way? It gradually becomes clear that even though there is a chainsaw on the stage, the bloody massacre will not take place. And that instead of a young man with a penchant for the Asian nunchaku weapon, someone else might actually be dangerous.
The authors of the libretto successfully and amusingly play with the audience’s expectations. He chooses simple but effective symbolism. In addition to heroism, they thematize the forest, a place long associated with the projection of various fears, and wild boars, a vermin there that must be put to rest once and for all.
Poignant motifs are balanced by humorous scenes in the living room – for example, a demanding chorus about salt, chicken, broth, carrots and Haribo teddy bears with accompanying outpourings by Viera Pavlíková, who perfectly plays the archetype of the caring grandmother, angrily blathering “I have to think of everything”.
Peta balances out a certain boredom by boxing, while his sister Johana goes everywhere with a camera and films what is happening. The recording is broadcast live on a large screen above the stage. This tends to be a rather overused element of contemporary theatre, but it works well here.
The role of the father, played by Zbigniew Kalina, seems the least prominent and perhaps somewhat neglected. He mainly contributes to coexistence by reading absurd newspaper headlines.
Despite various games and a joint lunch, meaningful conversation does not work in the family. The otherwise silent and map-absorbed grandfather played by Vladislav Georgiev talks to only one person – the politician Váňová.
Alžběta Vomáčková as Váňová, Viera Pavlíková as Grandma and Zbigniew Kalina as Father. | Photo: Martin Popelář
During the opera, the pensioner decides to commit an act. He picks up a chainsaw, builds models of trains, tracks and a forest with wild pigs in front of his granddaughter, of which he has an irrational fear. When, just before the end, he sees them instead of his relatives, he feels the urge to act. The scene changes quickly, the room disappears, and Georgiev, excellent in the role of a frustrated and in a sense shy senior citizen, takes off into the fog-shrouded sparse forest to meet his criminal destiny. Grandma watches him sadly from the office of the policewoman played by Barbora Špačková, who offers her tea during the subsequent interrogation.
The transformation of a room into a forest is one of the most successful moments of scenographer Jakub Peruth, his collaborator Ela Navrátilová and Judita Mejstříková, signed under the lighting design.
People and songs
When Jaromír Balda was asked in 2017 why the then 70-year-old supporter of the SPD movement planted two felled trees on the tracks, into which passenger trains then crashed, he said that he simply had “a terrible, animalistic fear for the beloved Czech race, Czech people and Czech songs “.
The senior was spreading leaflets in the vicinity of the place, which were supposed to give the impression that the act was caused by Islamists. According to the librettist Vilma Bořkovec, the act that Balda wanted to strengthen Czechs’ fear of Muslims or immigrants can be understood as “heroic, anti-heroic or grotesque, or ultimately even banally stupid”. Perhaps it is precisely because of all these qualities that the story of the first Czech terrorist is now attracting artists – in the spring, the Farma v jeskyni troupe performed it theatrically in Prague’s Dox, the production of which will be seen again in the fall. The opera Až tu váčí budo would also deserve another performance. It has the potential to appeal to audiences even as a repeated repertoire piece.
Opera
Haštal Hapka: When everyone is here
(Presented by the New Opera Days Ostrava festival)
Director: Vilma Bořkovec
Conductor: Patrik Kako
Jiří Myron Theatre, Ostrava, premiere on June 29.