2024-09-21 07:20:19
After more than three-quarters of a century, two one-act operas with the common theme of puppets are returning to the Czech stage. The opera was staged by the FX Šalda Theater in Liberec. In one composed evening, the audience will see the Nuremberg Maiden by the French composer Adolphe Adam and the Spanish Tyjátr by Master Pedro, composed by Manuel de Falla based on an episode from Don Quixote.
The venue is also unusual. The audience will see it in the Little Theater, where the opera has not been performed for 27 years. The leader of the Liberec ensemble, Karol Kevický, expects that it could also attract viewers who do not usually seek out this genre. “Certainly, with this intention, we wanted to revive the space of the Little Theater for opera productions as well,” he confirms.
From next season, they want to start creating a cycle of opera performances on a small stage, in which they will give opportunities to young directors and performers.
The composed evening entitled Master Pedro’s Tyjátr: The Virgin of Nuremberg premieres this Friday, with the next reruns on September 24 and October 2. It combines two works that were created approximately 130 years apart. Adolphe Adam wrote the French comic opera The Maid of Nuremberg in the mid-19th century. The portrait of Master Pedro was created in 1923 by Manuel de Falla, considered a representative of Impressionism.
According to the conductor Ondřej Olos, the project is unusual even for the performers. The Little Theater cannot accommodate the entire orchestra, but only 19 players. “Virtually every group is represented by almost a soloist,” says Olos. Unusually, the musicians will not be hidden in the orchestra, but spread out on both sides of the stage. So the audience will see them.
The tenor Dušan Růžička, who sings the central character of Master Pedro, also describes the novelty as unconventional. “I was definitely pleasantly surprised by the closeness of the audience and the closeness of the orchestra. And the close perception of that beautiful music is a great enrichment,” he says.
The story of the Nuremberg Puppet, based on the short story The Sandman by ETA Hoffmann, revolves around the toy manufacturer Cornelia. He creates a doll as a wife for his son and wants to bring her to life. The opera takes place in the household of an old toymaker. Master Pedro’s play for puppet theater, chamber orchestra and singers is based on an episode from the second volume of the novel Don Quixote de la Mancha by the writer Miguel de Cervantes.
It is the subject of puppets that connects the two one-act plays. “The choreographer came up with the idea of putting Adam under Manuel de Falla, I mean the piece now. It’s as if Falla played us a performance by Adolph Adam and thus we could play the performance entirely with puppets, which made me very excited. I liked this idea and then it seemed very legible and acceptable from the audience’s point of view,” adds Juraj Čiernik, director of the production. The puppets in the composed opera work will be represented by live opera singers.