Mus­rar­opera

Jury State­ment

“The locus of this work, Mus­rara has seen cen­turies of con­flict and coop­er­a­tion, dis­cord and har­mo­ny, con­flict and coex­is­tence. Through their deeply researched, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry process, the cre­ative team has craft­ed a sen­si­tive and mul­ti­lay­ered approach which takes on this palimpsest and reveals its mul­ti­ple truths. This is the pow­er of artis­tic expres­sion: to allow us to see beyond the rhetoric. In this piece, there are no pas­sive observers. Every­one is impli­cat­ed, every­one is part or the problem/​solution. We’re all in it togeth­er.”

(Limor Tomer for the Jury Mem­bers of the 2018 edi­tion of MusicThe­atreNOW com­pe­ti­tion)

MUSRAROPERA is a mobile radio­phon­ic opera, that had been con­ceived at the city quar­ter of
Mus­rara in Jerusalem/​Israel by an invi­ta­tion to the Mus­rara Mix Fes­ti­val 2018.
Mus­rara is an extreme­ly con­tro­ver­sial area, in a con­text of a con­tro­ver­sial city and coun­try with­in
the Mid­dle East. The quar­ter was locat­ed at the for­mer bor­der­line between Israel and Jor­dan in the
war of 1967. Nowa­days it touch­es the area next to Jaf­fa street, with its shops, bars and cafés, the
Pales­tin­ian inhab­it­ed area of Damaskus Gate and the Jew­ish ultra­ortho­dox quar­ter Mea Shearim.
The old hous­es in Ara­bic style, built by the for­mer wealthy Pales­tin­ian upper class, have then after
they left in the 60ies, been inhab­it­ed by peo­ple of very dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al, reli­gious and polit­i­cal
back­grounds, keep­ing the explo­sive coex­is­tence of the past in motion.
The future is uncer­tain, this is clear. It is con­struct­ed by future sto­ries to come. In the post-truth time
we strate­gi­cal­ly place a mobile pre-truth opera: by cre­at­ing an artis­tic dia­logue of sto­ries and truths
in speech and music, we change not only the future but as well the (under­stand­ing of) the past.
Present is the moment when we have the time frame and pow­er to make trans­for­ma­tion hap­pen.
The­atre and per­for­mance are a con­crete way to check what we don’t know and how (per­son­al and
col­lec­tive) his­to­ry could be per­formed. It is the fic­tive rehearsal and mas­ter train­ing of trans­form­ing
the uncer­tain present into a wished future world. The present is show­ing us what has not been done
in the last cen­tu­ry. The unbal­ance between glob­al north and glob­al south, export­ed wars and
Euro­cen­tric per­spec­tive is revolv­ing and will not cease in the near future. It will be decid­ed by our
acts rout­ed in a wider dis­course around all near neigh­bour­hoods, espe­cial­ly around the
Mediter­ranean. Jerusalem has in this con­text a sym­bol­ic posi­tion con­nect­ing the cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty,
sym­bol­ic present and uncer­tain pos­si­ble futures of a pre­cious col­lec­tiv­i­ty.
Start­ing from this point the sto­ry­line of the opera are the voic­es of the inhab­i­tants of Mus­rara and
their visions of the future. The inter­views are the ground of the piece, done by us with neigh­bours of
dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions, gen­der, coun­tries, reli­gions, eco­nom­i­cal and cul­tur­al back­grounds. They are
now and then accom­pa­nied or inter­rupt­ed by joy­ful Pales­tin­ian kids speak­ing in Ara­bic who
con­stant­ly try to catch atten­tion and cre­ate a con­nec­tion, between here and there, between the past
and the future. The idea is to leave the expla­na­tions of the past behind and request a posi­tion and
open­ness towards what could become. The musi­cal speci­fici­ties of each voice are com­posed and
melt­ed into a fic­tive col­lec­tive choir reveal­ing the har­monies and dis­so­nances. The con­tra­dic­tions of
dif­fer­ent posi­tions are not evi­dent at the first sight, but reveal its pow­er at a con­cen­trat­ed and deep­er
lis­ten­ing. The con­flicts of those peo­ple appar­ent­ly liv­ing peace­ful­ly togeth­er appear when the
nar­ra­tions of the past and the future, offer insights of their visions of how the world should or could
be. Placed next to each oth­er, in synch or in oppo­si­tion, qui­et­ly, loud, occu­py­ing acoustic spaces,
they become a con­stant beat of liv­ing dis­pute.
The minia­ture-orches­tra con­sist­ing of three musi­cians (non-seman­tic voice, clar­inet and dou­ble
bass) moves though the streets and is cap­tured live and com­posed elec­tron­i­cal­ly into a big cast. Via
radio trans­mit­ters and mobile phones the audi­ence receives the music and nar­ra­tive voice mix
while mov­ing through the area. The finale hap­pens at an open soc­cer­field, where games and fights
are played, one wish against anoth­er, still friend­ly, still exhaust­ing, togeth­er and play­ful.
Mus­rar­opera projects visions into the future recur­ring to the old struc­tures of the opera, full of
con­flicts, emo­tions and pathos. The piece trans­forms the for­mat into a con­tain­er of nowa­days voic­es
con­stant­ly adapt­ing to its envi­ron­ment, absorb­ing its colours and qual­i­ties. Artis­ti­cal­ly it cross­es the
bor­ders of the for­mat open­ing aes­thet­ic and polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion by stag­ing the het­ero­gene­ity of the
wider neigh­bour­hood around the Mediter­ranean and its coun­tries.
In a fur­ther idea the site speci­fic­ness of the piece absorbs as well the local voic­es and con­text where
it will be staged, blend­ing dif­fer­ent real­i­ties togeth­er to under­line the rela­tions of those places,
cul­tures and future visions with the sym­bol­ic area of Mus­rara.

SCORE

Mus­rar­opera is not a usu­al opera fol­low­ing a fixed score. The two struc­tur­ing per­form­ers of
sound­ing sit­u­a­tions con­stant­ly act and react to each oth­ers artis­tic deci­sion. Still the musi­cal
com­po­si­tion fol­low spe­cif­ic rules.
The for­mal con­cern in the com­po­si­tion is to com­bine dra­ma, sidespeci­fic­ness, nowa­days tech­nol­o­gy
and con­tem­po­rari­ness with her­itage, tra­di­tion, dra­ma, pathos, lyri­cism, the the­atri­cal stage.
The piece is struc­tured in three major parts, an ouver­ture, the walk through the quar­ter and a
sta­tion­ary col­lec­tive finale. In the walk­ing part, the most influ­en­tial artis­tic deci­sion is the urge and
vision to use sidespeci­fic­ness as a plat­form for stag­ing an artis­tic work, specif­i­cal­ly an opera.
Bind­ing the orig­i­nal inter­view mate­r­i­al to its musi­cal­i­sa­tion, we pushed the musi­cal- towards a
mobile com­po­si­tion, evok­ing in all aspects (stage, text and music) an authen­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the
real. We want to stage and con­nect the embody­ment of the truth by involv­ing the real
neigh­bour­hood, the space as well as the peo­ple express­ing their real­i­ties and con­vic­tions (con­cerns,
opin­ions, sit­u­a­tions, dreams) as phys­i­cal pres­ence or (in the Jerusalem ver­sion) with their voic­es.
Their orig­i­nary mate­r­i­al, con­tent- and sound­wise, becomes the libret­to which is inter­pret­ed and
musi­cal­ized. The words delin­eate, not only in seman­tics, but espe­cial­ly in their sound, the musi­cal
com­po­si­tion as a basic music infor­ma­tion car­ri­er. Words lose their read­abil­i­ty and become music,
are processed into music and are fur­ther musi­cal­ly inter­pret­ed by the singing voice. This voice binds
the seman­tic and dis­solv­ing words back into music, gen­er­at­ing the melod­ic abstract, becom­ing the
music input mate­r­i­al for the com­po­si­tion. At the same time the four acts (move­ments) of the opera
con­sist out of pre­cise­ly out­lined struc­tures and forms inter­pret­ed by the active musi­cians
(dou­ble­bass, clar­inet ecc) and pre­con­cieved by the com­po­si­tion in order to full-fill the devel­op­ment
of the dra­ma.
Par­tic­u­lar aspects to focus on are the two cre­ative music fields: one being busy with for­mu­lat­ing the
the­atri­cal act, by cre­at­ing the soil on which it hap­pens, and two the cre­ative ges­ture of musi­cal­iz­ing
the seman­tics, for­mu­lat­ing the dra­mat­ic evo­lu­tion. We encounter musi­c­less seman­tic and a
seman­ti­c­less music. The con­tra­dic­tion of this polar­i­ty cre­ates the excite­ment of the life-sit­u­a­tion: on
one hand the musi­cians inter­pre­ta­tion “lyrizis­es” the seman­tics and trans­forms the essence of the
“said” (of pre­sum­ably all lev­els) into music. On the oth­er hand the spo­ken word facil­i­tates
music/​singing and both ele­ments cre­ate a monadic enti­ty com­piled by an agglom­er­a­tion of
infor­ma­tions.
In the soc­cer­field moment the stage of dra­ma and music urges for wide­ness. After the inti­ma­cy and
nar­row­ness of the paths, shared with active audi­ence mem­bers, active musi­cians, active
con­trib­u­tors, occa­sion­al­ly pass­ing pedes­tri­ans, we approach a dif­fer­ent qual­i­ty of space. The
com­po­si­tion fore­sees a 30 piece ensem­ble of a most pos­si­ble vari­ety of tone gen­er­a­tors –
acoustic/​electronic/​bowed/​blown/​brass/​reeds – in order to pro­duce a walk­a­ble grid of musi­cians.
The “Klangfarben”-music being cre­at­ed fol­lows the score of “mov­ing” sounds sur­round­ing the
lis­ten­ing audi­ence mem­ber and being mixed with a solo for processed seman­tics. The devel­op­ment
cul­mi­nates in a “Klangfarben”-drone, pro­duced by all present peo­ple and there­fore con­ducts to an
active and audi­ence-par­tic­i­pa­to­ry tut­ti, find­ing a clear music end­ing.