ACTION OR ILLUSION
We are beginning the new season of the Rijeka CNT with a message from sport pitches: WINNING OURSELVES AGAIN!
The last three years were turbulent. Some would prefer to forget, wipe out and ignore all that worked against us. However, oblivion, wiping out and silence are not theatre tactics, at least not of the theatre that does not run away from itself. Theatre stops being a theatre and becomes show business, entertainment, circus, political platform or a warehouse of imaginarium of national culture once it gives up dramatic confrontation and action, critical discourse and responsibility, abandons artistic challenge, thoughts and passions, also the right to a mistake, even a failure.
In the last years we have been fighting with the fraud and debts of the former management, which brought the Rijeka theatre to the brink of disaster; we have defended the theatre from local and national neo-fascists ready to vandalise the building and physically attack our audience. We are still resisting the state and local bureaucracy (auditing, inspections and controls) that want us to make theatre artists redundant and turn the theatre into a bureaucratic institution; we have also stood up against the hypocrisy of trade union’s leaders who believe that the theatre exists and subsists because of them and their members, and not always and forever because of its spectators, community and society to which it has to know how to be – necessary; we have rejected the attacks of those who impose on the national theatre a conservation or commercial function, while in Rijeka they must be feeling as in a city that is lulled in a provincial inertia of self-sufficiency.
Yes, it is clear to me that there are some who consider such issues to be inappropriate to a new season introduction, discussions on the theatre in general. They would like us to relax them, make them happy, speak to them clearly and serve them something light, presented in a lovely way, also to play some recognisable music for them. Yet, such a theatre serves the purpose of illusion and does not act as a critical mirror of reality. Drama theatre is not only the one that stages a drama, it is also the one that insists on a critical act, instead of yielding to the pleasures of appearance. Thus, confrontations are unavoidable as conflict is fundamental to every drama. Theatre is a complex, creative and production, collective, that is, social process, in which roles are also played by artistic visions, ethical considerations and educational responsibilities, political interests, marketing strategies and economic circumstances, workers’ rights and rights of spectators, excess of ideas and limited possibilities, inventions and conventions. The theatre that limits itself to the production and consumption of a cultural product, to a mere occasion, lasts as long as the trend. Theatre as a tangle and confrontation of reasons, challenges and perspectives, a process, it is such a theatre that creates culture, meaning also that it is changing it.
This introduction is yet another attempt to explain in words what the theatre, the drama theatre is; what it is that makes it and what that it can do. To persevere with such a view and action, after three seasons, is no longer a matter of knowing, neither is it of possibilities or understanding circumstances. To persevere stopped being a matter of being patient with those who do not understand and do not know what theatre can or cannot be. What is left is – sport. Persistence. Perseverance in winning – ourselves.
And thus:
we are continuing with memorable concerts of the Rijeka Opera symphony orchestra under the baton of world-class conductors as Philipp von Steinaecker, Yordan Kamdzhalov, Marco Boemi, and, naturally, still with us, the main guest conductor of our orchestra and opera – Ville Matvejeff.
We are beginning with the revival of our Ballet led by its new director Maša Kolar, inviting you to meet the new members of our ballet ensemble in no less than five premieres! Croatian and Italian Drama ensemble and their guests are staging twelve premiere drama productions for all generations of spectators, among which there are, Woyzeck, The Presidents, Water, A Performance of Hamlet in the Village of Mrdusa Donja/La rappresentazione dell’Amleto nel villaggio di Merduscia di Sotto/, Six Passionate Women/Sei donne appassionate/, The Mountain Giants/I giganti della montagna.
The premiere opera programme has never been richer, moreover, with the titles as La Bohème, Dido and Aeneas, Macbeth, Falstaff, Norma and reruns of Otello and Werther.
We are giving guest performances throughout Europe, performing Otello and giving a concert in the Zagreb CNT and the Lisinski Concert Halll, also recording CDs with world-class soloists… Though, that is not much of news any more…
We are bringing performances, ensembles, music, dance and theatre artists that you are by no means to skip, namely, we will welcome on our stage the Zagreb CNT Ballet and Drama, Gavella Drama Theatre, Slovene National Theatres from Ljubljana and Maribor, Malenki Theatre from Israel, Slovenian Philharmonic, Katarina Bistrović Darvaš, Diana Haller, Aljaž Farasin, Daria Masiero, Luis Chapa, Paolo Magelli, Gina Patterson, Mauro Bigonzetti, Marco Graziani, Petrit Çeku, the Zagreb Quartet, Ars Longa, the young pianist star, Aljoša Jurinić, and one of the world leading tenors, Yusif Eyvazov.
Also, what is perhaps most important of all, we are starting the pilot programme of the Rijeka Youth Theatre Kamov, creating the future of the Rijeka Theatre, a new audience!
Therefore, stay with us, join us, you needn’t always love us, needn’t always understand us, but be certain of this – in the Rijeka CNT one has – to be!
Marin Blažević, General Manager and Artistic Director
In the season 2016/2017 it was intense and exciting, silenced and loud, intimate and revolutionary, local and international. We filled different local and foreign auditoriums, played in different languages, received different reactions, sometimes you loved us, sometimes not, but we hope that not in one moment did we make you feel indifferent, trying all over again to affirm that theatre is a living organism drawing up from the continual dialogue with the context in which it emerges, realising itself in the relation action – reaction and obtaining its full meaning.
In the season to come, the Croatian Drama is bringing new directors to the Rijeka theatre again. Anica Tomić and Matija Ferlin will direct for the first time in the CNT Ivan pl. Zajc, while Bojana Lazić for the first time in Croatia. The directing work of Renata Carol Gatica is already known to the Rijeka audience by the Croatian – Italian Drama hit Big Bird, Blubber, Falco/Spillo, Ciccio, Falco/, while in the new season Renata will join forces with one of the most interesting Croatian playwrights Vedrana Klepica in the project with the working title of Night School, in which the Croatian Drama actors will be joined by 3rd year students of the Acting and Media Study Programme of the Rijeka University Academy of Applied Arts.
Side by side, the repertoire of the Croatian Drama thus features Büchner, Nazor, Klepica and Schwab, forerunners and inheritors, drama and devised theatre, but always the theatre that is aware of its history and actuality, also of its own pledges for the future. In the new season journey our ensemble will be joined by two guests, the Belgrade actress Hana Selimović will make part of the Büchner’s Woyzeck team and Katarina Bistrović Darvaš, who will work with us again in Schwab’s The Presidents, after the successful co-operation in Moliere’s The Misanthrope when she delighted both the audience and critics. The new season’s novelty is the inauguration of the Zajc Lab that will be investigating new performing spaces and looking for new theatre languages. We have here two co-productions, the first, realised in co-operation with the Ljubljana Glej Theatre (Gledališče Glej), will present Slovene authors and performers, Katarina Stegnar, Urška Brodar and Jure Novak; while in the second, realised in co-operation with the OOUR Co-authors initiative art organisation, Rijeka dancer and choreographer Mila Čuljak will present herself as an author of a specific sensitivity. In a way, these two co-productions will round off the whole season, not only because on the time line they will present the first and the last season premiere, but also because on the meaning level they will mark the direction of the 2017/2018 season progress from the margin to the centre, from the individual to the system. We will be investigating in what way it is that the individual changes the system, and not how it becomes its victim; in what way it is that we are constructing the context that surrounds us, and that it is not the context that is irreversibly confining us. In all of this we are definitively going to be loud, concrete, direct and relentless, as it befits the margin fighting its way to the centre.
We have already taken a run and can hardly wait for the jump. Looking forward to seeing you in the theatre!
Jelena Kovačić, Croatian Drama Director
ZAJC LAB
ZAJC LAB is a programme conceived as an incubator of new ideas and a place where authors of different aesthetic and poetic procédé encounter, their projects participating equally in creating of the CNT Ivan pl. Zajc Croatian Drama repertoire. Some of fundamental objectives of this part of the programme comprise investigating new artistic practices, integrating other media into the theatre art, also opening of new places of co-operation for artists of different profiles and poetics as a prerequisite for finding new forms.
LA BOHÈME – WERTHER – DIDO AND AENEAS – MACBETH – OTELLO – FALSTAFF – NORMA
It is with the new season that we are closing the first cycle of the repertoire, musical- performing, aesthetic and production-ethical revival of the Rijeka Opera that we started three years ago. Since the autumn of 2014, we presented no less than four operas (Oedipus rex, La vida breve, Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali) that had not been performed in Rijeka before, in co-operation with the Music Biennale Zagreb we gave the world premiere of the contemporary opera Klothó, having also brought back to the Opera programme works that the Rijeka audience could not have heard and seen in its town for over half a century, as Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin, Andrea Chénier and Otello.
We have introduced the Rijeka Opera to the scene of theatre contemporaneity, resisting the megalomania of setting and frivolous spectacle making that reduce the art of opera to a socially irresponsible, actually arrogant cultural and political economy. We in the Rijeka Opera simply do not have money for sumptuous set designs and costumes, but have learned to turn the shortage on the one side to the surplus on the other – not lacking creative ideas and enthusiasm, readiness for a risk, soloist singers and members of the orchestra who refuse to abandon their artistic devotion to a performance, despite difficult conditions in which we work and create, often on the brink of the possible and sustainable. For a few years we have been repeating this hoping to be heard by few of our spectators, though often loudly disapproving ones, who would like everything “as it used to be once”, which is sometimes measured in decades.
We are also repeating that opera in a small city as ours cannot survive without new faces in its auditorium. To love opera means to think of its future, and not to keep turning back to its past stubbornly. The point is not in discarding history and tradition, but in persisting in the attempt of their reappraisal. It was with this idea and intention in mind that we staged Rigoletto, Carmen, Otello and the memorable “film-like” Don Giovanni in the last three seasons. In the new season we are continuing with this direction; we will be investigating, in the light and in the darkness of our contemporaneity, how, in stage terms, to read afresh the works of the three frontmen of the Italian opera in the repertoire range from the culmination of bel canto in the end of the season, Bellini’s Norma, to the culmination of verismo, Puccini’s La Bohème, at its beginning. Between these two, we will stage the darkest and the most cheerful of Verdi’s operas, Macbeth and Falstaff, also return to Baroque music with Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Having directed Werther last season, we have again Fabrizio Melano, Metropolitan Opera veteran, who directed La Bohème with opera legends as Renata Scotto and Luciano Pavarotti. In Rijeka, Melano has found ideal young interpreters of Mimì and Rodolfo, that is, Anamarija Knego and Aljaž Farasin. With Dido and Aeneas we will again be our audience reminding of the vast opera literature besides the nineteenth-century Italian and French tradition. (Yes, your guess is right – in the next opera season, 2018/19, we will no longer be able to resist the responsibility of confronting the Rijeka audience with the German opera repertoire. So, relax while you still can!) After Otello, Macbeth and Falstaff will round off the trilogy of Verdi’s operas created after Shakespeare’s tragedies and comedies, while Norma will present Dunja Vejzović in a new role, that of the conductor. However, these are not the only highlights of the season. For the first time on Croatian stages, Kristina Kolar sings her new role of Lady Macbeth; Diana Haller returns to our opera house as Adalgisa in Norma, while Giorgio Surian, in a grand finale of his career, is facing a challenge for which only the greatest singers have the courage and knowledge, namely, in only three weeks he will sing the roles of Macbeth, Iago and Falstaff on the Rijeka Opera stage. It is difficult to think of a stronger conclusion for an introduction to the season.
Marin Blažević, PhD
Concert season – a gem of the season 17/18
Dear music lovers,
The Opera orchestra concerts have always been the events in which real lovers of classical music find their greatest joy. After the rich and successful programmes of previous seasons, it is even higher that we are raising our standards! Owing to the enthusiasm and rapid development of our orchestra, we have a great pleasure to present another rich musical season.
Guided primarily by highest artistic criteria, we have created a programme that will enable you to listen to some of the most famous works of symphonic literature, world premieres of new works composed especially for our orchestra and some less performed works that are definitely worth knowing.
It is the masterpieces of classical music that will be the highlight of this season. Thus, at the very beginning of the season, on the 29th of September, we will be able to listen to one of the most popular Beethoven’s symphonies – The Ninth. Maestro Zoran Juranić, always our dear guest, will be joined by the absolute star pianist of the Croatian and world fame, the young Aljoša Jurinić, in the performance of the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Prokofiev. However, the beginning of the concert is reserved for I. pl. Zajc and his Fiuman Rhapsody.
Already on the 31st of October we have the programme for the occasion of the All Saints’ Day, namely, Mozart’s Requiem. For this special occasion we are presenting a special conductor! Philipp von Steinaecker, one of the leading conductors of the younger generation, will be conducting our ensemble for the first time.
Maestro Yordan Kamdzalov, who enchanted us last season with his interpretation of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, is returning on the 22nd of December. He will be conducting the monumental Fourth Symphony (Romantic) by Anton Bruckner. This is a unique opportunity to listen to a performance of a Bruckner’s symphony in our theatre after more than 40 years!
In January we have definitely the most intriguing concert of the season, namely, two artists in front of the Rijeka audience for the first time and two musical pieces that have not been preformed in this city before. The Korean conductor with the Vienna address TaeJung Lee will be conducting our orchestra performing the most popular composition by A. Copland, Appalachian Spring. The soloist of the evening is Petrit Çeku, a charismatic guitar virtuoso who will be performing in the Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra by M. Castelnuovo-Tedesco. The second part of the concert is reserved for the popular Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony.
Underline March in your calendar, as we have no less than three concerts not to be missed. On the 5th of March there is a Super gala Concert with a number of great singers (Lucio Gallo, Yusiv Eyvazov, Kristina Kolar and Rossana Rinaldi) and two conductors (Marco Boemi and Ville Matvejeff). On that occasion we will be presenting our last two CDs that are published by well-known international recording companies. Once you have enjoyed the most beautiful opera arias, already on the 20th of March there will be our main guest conductor Ville Matvejeff with the world premiere of a piece by Dubravko Polanović, written especially for our orchestra. Next to the orchestra and chorus it is Ivana Srbljan, our excellent Opera soloist, who will perform this musical work composed on the poetry of I. G. Kovačić by one of the most talented composers of the younger generation. There will also be a masterpiece of the classical literature, namely, Beethoven’s The First Symphony that will conclude our two-year mini-cycle of Beethoven’s odd-numbered symphonies. We will open the concert with one of the most popular works of E. Grieg, Peer Gynt, Suite No. 1.
Easter time will bring us our exclusive guests from Ljubljana. It is our great honour to be able to welcome in Rijeka the Slovenian Philharmonic (28 March) with Rossini’s Stabat Mater. Next to Maestra Martina Batič, there will be star singers as Kristina Kolar, Diana Haller, Dario Bercich and the American tenor Michael Spyers. Not to be missed!
The spring concert of the 22nd May we can especially recommend to all lovers of good music and … those still to become so! Listen to the Brahms’ Violin Concerto and the Sixth Symphony (Pathetique) by P. I. Tchaikovsky with Maestro Pavle Dešpalj and our regular guest violinist Marco Graziani. What more can you wish for?
But, that is not all! Next to all the above mentioned there are the unavoidable New Year’s concerts, this year in a completely new attire and under the baton of Maestro Yordan Kamdzalov! Get the palms of your hands ready!
The winter festive mood will be enhanced by the Opera chorus with their Maestra Nicoletta Olivieri, who are preparing the traditional Christmas concert for you.
We are also pleased to announce a concert in February with a classical and popular programme, when the Josip Kaplan Young People’s Chorus will perform with the Opera orchestra under the baton of Maestro Tomislav Fačini. The national principal soloist Mirella Katarinčić Toić with her guests and Maestro Igor Vlajnić as the orchestra conductor will give her farewell concert on 21st of June. It will be the occasion to remember all the great roles and famous arias that our prima donna has so masterfully performed in the last 40 years!
But, that is not all! We have not forgotten the lovers of chamber music. The main accent here will be on classical works performed by renowned chamber music groups as the Rijeka Piano Trio Tartini and the Zagreb Quartet. The vocal recital of 18th November is the occasion to listen to our soloists Anamarija Knego and Ivana Srbljan accompanied by Nicoletta Olivieri on piano in the duets by the most famous women composers of the nineteenth century. At the concert of 31st January you will have the opportunity to listen to string and win ensembles of the Opera orchestra in an interesting musical duel! It is the first time that we will welcome the Ars Longa Early Music Ensemble and will be able to enjoy the grandeur of Baroque music played on the original instruments. We are also reminding you that you will be able to listen to all chamber concerts from comfortable chairs in the theatre stalls!
We have chosen only the best for you. You can do the same!
Petar Kovačić, Opera Director
In the new season of the Rijeka CNT Ballet, we decided to be guided by ideas of diversity, work and excellence in order to emancipate and strengthen the position and activities of the Rijeka Ballet ensemble. The variety of artistic projects and their very titles, from Macbeth, In any Case and Merry Christmas of Playful Children, to Hansel and Gretel and Rossini Cards, point to the diversity that represents the place of encounters, openness, curiosity, solidarity and equality. It is in the encounter with the other and the different that it is possible to test and challenge the flexibility of the ballet ensemble to be ready for experiment, creation, innovation, and, finally, the very artistic identity and attitude of the ensemble. The aim of the varied programme is to encourage the development of knowledge, sensitivity, but also the appetite of the existing audience, with the constant desire to bring the new one, the emphasis being on accessibility, on culture for all. Work as the act of creation itself, the basis also of the very existence of the ballet ensemble, denotes heterogeneous and inclusive action. Engaging in the ballet, also other artistic programmes of the national theatre, through workshops and educational programmes, the ensemble can realize the level of excellence, that is, raise standards of its artistic activity. Inviting the esteemed key Croatian and foreign authors means to recognize new, innovative and creative artists, also the readiness and desire to work with highest artistic standards. Chronologically looking, the season begins with the staging of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which in its action reflects the focusing of Renaissance on the social phenomenon of power that takes man to the line of losing ethical quality, losing his closest ones and finally losing himself. The power of destiny in confining us is the backbone of the second project entitled In Any Case. Its guiding idea is to make visible a marginalized group of dancers whose aging erodes their professional excellence, usefulness and material existence, often self-respect, as well. With different methods and from different perspectives, these two projects question a constant in the making of a human society, it being its power and its ability to intervene in the entire social being.
With the projects Merry Christmas of Playful Children and Hansel and Gretel, the Rijeka CNT Ballet will address children and the young directly, their parents as well, in order to bring them closer to art, especially to dance and ballet through family topics and questioning of fundamental ethical and human values. We are continuing with making impact on creating, also educating of the new audience, as well as potential creators of art.
And finally, guided by the principle of excellence, we have chosen a contemporary ballet performance Rossini Cards by the choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti, which captivated the critics and the audience throughout Europe and the North America, in order to open to the Rijeka ballet ensemble the opportunity to show and prove again by consistent work their readiness to follow the greatest challenges of contemporary ballet art.
Maša Kolar, Ballet Director
Concert season – a gem of the season 17/18
Dear music lovers,
The Opera orchestra concerts have always been the events in which real lovers of classical music find their greatest joy. After the rich and successful programmes of previous seasons, it is even higher that we are raising our standards! Owing to the enthusiasm and rapid development of our orchestra, we have a great pleasure to present another rich musical season.
Guided primarily by highest artistic criteria, we have created a programme that will enable you to listen to some of the most famous works of symphonic literature, world premieres of new works composed especially for our orchestra and some less performed works that are definitely worth knowing.
It is the masterpieces of classical music that will be the highlight of this season. Thus, at the very beginning of the season, on the 29th of September, we will be able to listen to one of the most popular Beethoven’s symphonies – The Ninth. Maestro Zoran Juranić, always our dear guest, will be joined by the absolute star pianist of the Croatian and world fame, the young Aljoša Jurinić, in the performance of the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Prokofiev. However, the beginning of the concert is reserved for I. pl. Zajc and his Fiuman Rhapsody.
Already on the 31st of October we have the programme for the occasion of the All Saints’ Day, namely, Mozart’s Requiem. For this special occasion we are presenting a special conductor! Philipp von Steinaecker, one of the leading conductors of the younger generation, will be conducting our ensemble for the first time.
Maestro Yordan Kamdzalov, who enchanted us last season with his interpretation of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, is returning on the 22nd of December. He will be conducting the monumental Fourth Symphony (Romantic) by Anton Bruckner. This is a unique opportunity to listen to a performance of a Bruckner’s symphony in our theatre after more than 40 years!
In January we have definitely the most intriguing concert of the season, namely, two artists in front of the Rijeka audience for the first time and two musical pieces that have not been preformed in this city before. The Korean conductor with the Vienna address TaeJung Lee will be conducting our orchestra performing the most popular composition by A. Copland, Appalachian Spring. The soloist of the evening is Petrit Çeku, a charismatic guitar virtuoso who will be performing in the Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra by M. Castelnuovo-Tedesco. The second part of the concert is reserved for the popular Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony.
Underline March in your calendar, as we have no less than three concerts not to be missed. On the 5th of March there is a Super gala Concert with a number of great singers (Lucio Gallo, Yusiv Eyvazov, Kristina Kolar and Rossana Rinaldi) and two conductors (Marco Boemi and Ville Matvejeff). On that occasion we will be presenting our last two CDs that are published by well-known international recording companies. Once you have enjoyed the most beautiful opera arias, already on the 20th of March there will be our main guest conductor Ville Matvejeff with the world premiere of a piece by Dubravko Polanović, written especially for our orchestra. Next to the orchestra and chorus it is Ivana Srbljan, our excellent Opera soloist, who will perform this musical work composed on the poetry of I. G. Kovačić by one of the most talented composers of the younger generation. There will also be a masterpiece of the classical literature, namely, Beethoven’s The First Symphony that will conclude our two-year mini-cycle of Beethoven’s odd-numbered symphonies. We will open the concert with one of the most popular works of E. Grieg, Peer Gynt, Suite No. 1.
Easter time will bring us our exclusive guests from Ljubljana. It is our great honour to be able to welcome in Rijeka the Slovenian Philharmonic (28 March) with Rossini’s Stabat Mater. Next to Maestra Martina Batič, there will be star singers as Kristina Kolar, Diana Haller, Dario Bercich and the American tenor Michael Spyers. Not to be missed!
The spring concert of the 22nd May we can especially recommend to all lovers of good music and … those still to become so! Listen to the Brahms’ Violin Concerto and the Sixth Symphony (Pathetique) by P. I. Tchaikovsky with Maestro Pavle Dešpalj and our regular guest violinist Marco Graziani. What more can you wish for?
But, that is not all! Next to all the above mentioned there are the unavoidable New Year’s concerts, this year in a completely new attire and under the baton of Maestro Yordan Kamdzalov! Get the palms of your hands ready!
The winter festive mood will be enhanced by the Opera chorus with their Maestra Nicoletta Olivieri, who are preparing the traditional Christmas concert for you.
We are also pleased to announce a concert in February with a classical and popular programme, when the Josip Kaplan Young People’s Chorus will perform with the Opera orchestra under the baton of Maestro Tomislav Fačini. The national principal soloist Mirella Katarinčić Toić with her guests and Maestro Igor Vlajnić as the orchestra conductor will give her farewell concert on 21st of June. It will be the occasion to remember all the great roles and famous arias that our prima donna has so masterfully performed in the last 40 years!
But, that is not all! We have not forgotten the lovers of chamber music. The main accent here will be on classical works performed by renowned chamber music groups as the Rijeka Piano Trio Tartini and the Zagreb Quartet. The vocal recital of 18th November is the occasion to listen to our soloists Anamarija Knego and Ivana Srbljan accompanied by Nicoletta Olivieri on piano in the duets by the most famous women composers of the nineteenth century. At the concert of 31st January you will have the opportunity to listen to string and win ensembles of the Opera orchestra in an interesting musical duel! It is the first time that we will welcome the Ars Longa Early Music Ensemble and will be able to enjoy the grandeur of Baroque music played on the original instruments. We are also reminding you that you will be able to listen to all chamber concerts from comfortable chairs in the theatre stalls!
We have chosen only the best for you. You can do the same!
Petar Kovačić, Opera Director
