As the successive seasons of the Croatian National Theatre Ivan pl. Zajc will be characterised by activities, projects and processes directed to the year of Rijeka as the European Capital of Culture – a Port of Diversity…
As it is also the Italian Company that makes an integral part of the identity and programme of the Rijeka Croatian National Theatre; as the culture of Rijeka is formed by representatives of other ethnicities as well, who are making part of all our ensembles, especially so the opera and the ballet…
As we are continuing the cooperation with European theatres, artistic companies and organisations, continuing to participate in international festivals and record operas for leading international recording companies…
As we are bringing first-rate artist to Rijeka, singers, dancers, actors, choreographers, directors and conductors from all over the world, thus reaching even further than the European cultural sphere…
As to understand and make theatre as performance in which the aesthetic is inseparable from the ethical, the social from the critical, the idea from the gesture, the responsibility from the action and the experience from the knowledge, nowadays means freeing the space for the right to diversity, for the dialogue and cooperation among individuals, communities, nations and cultures…
This is why – the International National Theatre, as a breakwater of diversity.
On the threshold of the new season the Croatian Drama Company can proudly look back on the past one. The fairy tale in two languages the Big Bird, Blubber, Falco/Spillo, Ciccio, Falco/ Dugonja, Trbonja, Vidonja was seen by more than a thousand children and adults; Thomas Bernhard’s text Facing Retirement was staged for the first time in Croatia in February; In March, after 25 years for the first time on the stage of a Croatian National Theatre, it was Mira Furlan’s first appearance on the stage of the HNK Ivan pl. Zajc in the role of Cassandra; The month of May was marked by the last season’s premiere of the Croatian Company held at the Wiener Festwochen, one of the greatest and most significant European theatre festivals, where the production Our Violence and Your Violence had its first night for the Vienna audience.
The Croatian Drama Company productions had guest appearances in various festivals, came back to Rijeka with prizes, filled auditoriums, brought new faces to the stage, raised some significant issuesobserving the context in which the theatre is being created with eyes wide open. Is that the reason why the Croatian Drama Company was denied the Ministry of Culture financial support, threatening thus its very existence? Was it punishment or encouragement? You can check this in the new season of the Croatian Drama Company! What we will be raising are issues on the meaning of art and the position of artist in the contemporary society. Do we need art at all and if we do in what way does it have impact on our lives? Can we reduce it to the pre-set patterns? Who is it that feels threatened by issues that art raises, the truth that it might carry? Who are its judges? What would happen if it did not exist? Who is it that we are performing for? What is it that we expect from art, especially the dramatic one? When and why do we have to defend it? The productions that you will be watching this season will make an attempt to discuss some of these questions, also raise many others: It is because of a work of art and the truth contained in it that Margarita will sell her soul to Woland; Bergman’s Charlotta will leave her family for a pianist career; Our Violence and Your Violence will confront a work of art with the refugee crisis; Molière will openly ask us who it is that can determine the value of an art work, how and why; Jules Verne has much to tell us on cultural traditions in the (post) colonial world, while the contemporary adaptation of the Little Red Riding Hood will remind us of how the story telling can teach us of life.
Jelena Kovačić, Croatian Drama Company Director
WERTHER – FAUST – OTELLO – RIGOLETTO – CESARE – KRÓL ROGER – ERO
Having in the last two years revitalised the Opera of the Rijeka HNK (Croatian National Theatre), we are continuing its renewal in terms of the repertory, standards of musical performance and aesthetic challenges, as well as production ethics. Since the autumn of 2014, we have presented no less than four operas (Oedipus rex, La vida breve, Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali) and a number of music compositions (symphonies, soloist concerts and other forms, ranging from Bach’s St. John Passion, Shostakovich’s Symphony No.11 and Mahler’s Symphony No.5 to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Adams’ Shaker Loops and Juranić’s “symphonic torso” Inter arma narrant Musae that have never been performed in Rijeka before. We have also brought back to the Rijeka Opera programme some works that the Rijeka audience has not been able to hear and see for over half a century, namely, Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin and Andrea Chénier.
The predictability that we found, together with the adaptability of the repertory to routine expectations of the public, we have replaced with the programme that broadens the horizons of knowledge and deepens the experience of classical music, attracting to the theatre new groups and generations of spectators/listeners, along those favouring tradition but curious nevertheless. We have introduced the Rijeka Opera on the scene of theatrical contemporaneity, resisting the grandomania of décor and frivolous spectacularisation, which reduce the art of opera to the socially irresponsible, in fact, arrogant cultural and political economy. We in the Rijeka Opera Company simply do not have money for luxurious performances and ever new costumes, however, with a deficit on one side, we have learned to turn it into the surplus on the other – as we are not lacking creative ideas and enthusiasm, readiness to risk, soloist singers and members of the orchestra who refuse to give up on their artistic devotion to the performance, in spite of hard conditions in which we work and create, often on the brink of the possible and sustainable.
There is no doubt that the process of innovating can only be continued. Moreover, such are the expectations of the ever-growing audience of the Rijeka Opera and the concerts of its orchestra, also presupposed by the title of the future European Capital of Culture (Rijeka 2020).
Already at the beginning of the new season, Fabrizio Melano, the Metropolitan Opera veteran, is presenting Massenet’s Werther with Aljaž Farasin in the title role and Ivana Srbljan as his Charlotte. After the disturbing Rigoletto, Lary Zappia proposes a new staging of the much-loved Ero the Joker, with Kristina Kolar, Domagoj Dorotić (Rijeka debut) and Giorgio Surian in leading roles. Giulio Cesare in Egitto, following its first ever Rijeka performance last spring, will tour in Cankarjev dom in Ljubljana, while our soloists and orchestra are opening the Music Biennale in Zagreb with the world premiere of Klotho – thread of the tales by Martyna Kosecka, which we will see in Rijeka at the beginning of the season 17/18. The Rijeka Opera concert season features Gounod’s Faust, immediately after its recording for the Universal Music. The list of guest soloists of this super-gala concert (Colombaro, Gallo, Haller, Farasin, Tepponen, Torikka) seems to have been copied from the posters of leading European opera houses. And it has not. We are also having the premiere of the mysterious opera Król Roger by Karol Szymanowski, the concert one only for the time being. And, yes, in the last days of January, it is the premiere of Verdi’s masterpiece Otello that we will venture to stage in Rijeka again, after half a century.
Marin Blažević, General Manager
AS MUCH AS TWENTYONE CONCERTS IN THE NEW SEASON
These CD recording projects for international recording companies open until recently unimaginable opportunity for the Rijeka audience to enjoy promotional concerts with top soloists that we would not be able to have in Rijeka in any other arrangement. In the upcoming concert season there are three such concerts. First, on the 16th November, there is the super-gala Faust with a list of guest soloists that you cannot have seen on the posters of the Rijeka Opera so far (Carlo Colombara, Lucio Gallo, Marjukka Tepponen, Aljaž Farasin, Diana Haller, Waltteri Torikka). Then, you have to set aside the weekend of the 24th and 25th February for two promotional concerts in a sequence, when we will perform Papandopulo’s Third Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and the day after, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, with the pianist Oliver Triendl and violinist Dan Zhuo, both times with Ville Matvejeff as conductor, also Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony as a grandiose, while in expression and attitude ambivalent, parody-like finale of the concert evening.
In addition, the Opera orchestra will perform three most famous Beethoven’s symphonies (Third, Fifth and Ninth), Strauss’s Metamorphosen, Vivaldi’s Magnificat and Gloria, as well as for the first time in Rijeka, the mysterious opera Król Roger by Karol Szymanowski, which we will first present in concert form, while one day in the future we hope to have its fully-staged performance. The new concert season ranges from the world premiere of the composition by a young Rijeka composer Juraj Marko Žerovnik Ištipana hartija after the collection of poems by Janko Polić Kamov and composed for the very HNK Ivan pl. Zajc Opera, to the recital Spanish Passions by Diana Haller, our regular guest, the above not containing even half of the programme!
Let us add the following, namely, Ville Matvejeff as the leading guest conductor continues his cooperation with the “Zajc” Orchestra and Opera for at least another season and is taking us to the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall where we will be opening the prestigious Arioso Cycle, then, also in Rijeka, and with the above mentioned “A-class” soloists, we will have the concert performance of Gounod’s Faust, just after having recorded it for the Universal Music recording company. The programmes of the Christmas Concert of the Opera Chorus and the New Year’s Concert of the Rijeka Opera Orchestra will make you love them even more. The Cycle of Chamber Concerts in the new space, on the big stage and in the acoustic shell by the architect Idis Turato, has never been more extensive and varied. Do not miss no less than ten concerts and a number of exceptional soloists, from Diana Ćiković Grubišić and Goran Filipec to Marco Graziani and Petar Kovačić; from the anniversary of the Rijeka Chamber Orchestra to the new “Ad Hoc” ensemble of the soloist from our orchestra; from Galactic Concerts of Zoran Novačić to the concert devoted to James Joyce – classical and musical Rijeka is already the European Capital of Culture!
Marin Blažević, General Manager
After one of the most productive seasons of the Rijeka Ballet, we continue with raising the artistic and technical level of the performance of our dancers and productions. We will cooperate with a choreographer of North-African origin, Raza Hammad, whose narrative modern ballet Checkmate, together with my Dogma, will open the ballet season 2016/17. The use of the 3D video mapping in Dogma will enable the spectators to have a completely new experience of the movement, dance, and of reality, if I may say so. We will revive the exceptionally loved and popular ballets as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Nutcracker, having in both of them as guests two top ballet soloists from the Hungarian National Ballet. We may be crazily courageous, but it is also with a great respect that we are starting the project of the season, namely, The Swan Lake. We have decided not to be discouraged by the temporarily minimal number of dancers, the lack of classical repertory, reduced budget… On the contrary! All of these are serious cuts, yet challenges as well. Together with the choreographer Lóránd Zachár and the Rijeka Opera orchestra we are creating a new version of the cult classical ballet in which we will engage all the most prominent dancers of our ensemble. We are not interested in competing with others, but wish to give our public the best we can, with respect and gratitude for their following us faithfully. At the end of the season, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of death of August Rodin, we will dive into the life of the great artist and the most intensive passions that he is often connected with. Rodin will be the topic, inspiration paradigm for those of our dancers who take courage to pursue choreography. Finally, we are not afraid of failure! Let me paraphrase the famous Coco Chanel who observed that a career is not built on successes but on failures. It is only the failures that are the wind and the doors to a more clever, satisfied and “upgraded” version of us. This is why in the season 2016/17 we invite you to join the HNK Ivan pl. Zajc Ballet in intriguing projects through which we will show that through artistic activity we can break the fear, that through the dance we can overcome monotony, one-mindedness, languages, time… Let us encourage you and free with the dance!
Balázs Baranyai, Ballet Company Director (acting)
The Italian Drama Company, the first Italian professional permanent theatre ensemble and the only permanent Italian theatre outside the home country, celebrates its seventieth anniversary of existence.
The whole of the ensemble will celebrate the anniversary with the production of The Mistress of the Inn, in the direction of one of the greatest European directors Paolo Magelli.
This great production will be followed by a specially designed season that will take into account hundreds of subscribers as well as the school going public, the Italian Community of Istria and Rijeka and the ever growing number of Croatian and Italian spectators from Trieste, Milan and the Puglia region.
We will continue our cooperation with different Italian theatres, among which we have to mention Il Rossetti and La Contrada from Trieste. It is with them that we will stage our authors from Istria and Venezia Giulia region. They will tell us of the life of Gabriele D’Annunzio or make us fall in love with the works of Tomizza, while for the youth we will create a special subscription that will comprise two new productions, in coproduction with the Croatian Company and the Trieste Theatre La Contrada.
According to the wishes of our spectators we will renew some of the last season’s performances, as Exodus – The Pentateuch #2 (Esodo Pentateuco #2), Lunch Break Murders (Omicidi in pausa pranzo) and And what if instead of Pinocchio… (E se invece di Pinocchio…). That is the sign that our productions have managed to reach successfully the heterogeneous public that has enthusiastically accepted them, while growing bigger and more demanding.
Happy Birthday to the Italian Company!
Leonora Surian, Italian Company Director (acting) and Giuseppe Nicodemo, Director (acting)
AS MUCH AS TWENTYONE CONCERTS IN THE NEW SEASON
These CD recording projects for international recording companies open until recently unimaginable opportunity for the Rijeka audience to enjoy promotional concerts with top soloists that we would not be able to have in Rijeka in any other arrangement. In the upcoming concert season there are three such concerts. First, on the 16th November, there is the super-gala Faust with a list of guest soloists that you cannot have seen on the posters of the Rijeka Opera so far (Carlo Colombara, Lucio Gallo, Marjukka Tepponen, Aljaž Farasin, Diana Haller, Waltteri Torikka). Then, you have to set aside the weekend of the 24th and 25th February for two promotional concerts in a sequence, when we will perform Papandopulo’s Third Concerto for Piano and Orchestra and the day after, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, with the pianist Oliver Triendl and violinist Dan Zhuo, both times with Ville Matvejeff as conductor, also Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony as a grandiose, while in expression and attitude ambivalent, parody-like finale of the concert evening.
In addition, the Opera orchestra will perform three most famous Beethoven’s symphonies (Third, Fifth and Ninth), Strauss’s Metamorphosen, Vivaldi’s Magnificat and Gloria, as well as for the first time in Rijeka, the mysterious opera Król Roger by Karol Szymanowski, which we will first present in concert form, while one day in the future we hope to have its fully-staged performance. The new concert season ranges from the world premiere of the composition by a young Rijeka composer Juraj Marko Žerovnik Ištipana hartija after the collection of poems by Janko Polić Kamov and composed for the very HNK Ivan pl. Zajc Opera, to the recital Spanish Passions by Diana Haller, our regular guest, the above not containing even half of the programme!
Let us add the following, namely, Ville Matvejeff as the leading guest conductor continues his cooperation with the “Zajc” Orchestra and Opera for at least another season and is taking us to the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall where we will be opening the prestigious Arioso Cycle, then, also in Rijeka, and with the above mentioned “A-class” soloists, we will have the concert performance of Gounod’s Faust, just after having recorded it for the Universal Music recording company. The programmes of the Christmas Concert of the Opera Chorus and the New Year’s Concert of the Rijeka Opera Orchestra will make you love them even more. The Cycle of Chamber Concerts in the new space, on the big stage and in the acoustic shell by the architect Idis Turato, has never been more extensive and varied. Do not miss no less than ten concerts and a number of exceptional soloists, from Diana Ćiković Grubišić and Goran Filipec to Marco Graziani and Petar Kovačić; from the anniversary of the Rijeka Chamber Orchestra to the new “Ad Hoc” ensemble of the soloist from our orchestra; from Galactic Concerts of Zoran Novačić to the concert devoted to James Joyce – classical and musical Rijeka is already the European Capital of Culture!
Marin Blažević, General Manager
