WORLD PREMIERE OF SAMIR ODEH-TAMIMI'S THE ARAB APOCALYPSE
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Two special performances will take place on 4 and 5 July for the world premiere of Samir Odeh-Tamimi’s The Arab Apocalypse, a modern oratorio based on the eponymous poem by Etel Adnan published in 1980.
Claudia Pérez Iñesta and Samir Odeh-Tamimi’s libretto is based on 23 of the 59 songs that make up the collection by poet, writer and visual artist Etel Adnan. Her poetic epic recounts a waking nightmare that has refused to end, and offers one of the most significant, impressive and stunning artistic depictions of the civil war in Lebanon. This now prophetic libretto has led to an atypical and meditative opera, a stroke of musical theatre that is making its world premiere at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, in a mise en espace by stage director Pierre Audi. Written for a fifteen-person orchestra, a five-woman chorus—like that of a Greek tragedy—and a Témoin (“Witness”) performed by baritone Thomas Oliemans, Samir Odeh-Tamimi’s score, including parts for electronic instruments, is premiering under the baton of Ilan Volkov conducting Ensemble Modern. Stage and lighting director Urs Schönebaum captures the two symbolic motifs that are central to this epic series of mystical poetic variations: the sun—benevolent and terrifying, fertile and destructive, radiant and cataclysmic, all at the same time—and primary colours. Like mysterious signs, images (i.e. glyphs and symbols) take over once the poems and their words—confounded by the catastrophe, and levelled by the outpouring of emotion and reflection—collide with the indescribable.
> 2 performances on 4 and 5 July at 10pm at the Grande Halle, Parc des Ateliers - LUMA Arles
FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE ARAB APOCALYPSE
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The Arab Apocalypse is broadcasted on #THE DIGITALSTAGE from 15 July
