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FULL EUROPERA 1 & 2 (John Cage) Athens 2020 Ζοe Chatziantoniou, Michalis Papapetrou
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: EUROPERA 1 & 2
- Composer: Cage John
- Libretto: Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Alternative Stage, Greek National Opera GNO, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens, Greece
- Recorded: March 6, 2020
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Ζοe Chatziantoniou, Michalis Papapetrou
- Conductor: Michalis Papapetrou
- Orchestra: Athens Symphony Youth Orchestra
- Stage Director: Zoe Hadjiantoniou
- Stage Designer: Petros Touloudis
- Costume Designer: Petros Touloudis
- Lighting Designer: Eliza Alexandropoulou
Information about the Recording
- Published by: GNO
- Date Published: 2000
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Europeras is a series of five operas by the composer John Cage. Cage explained the punning title thus: “For two hundred years the Europeans have been sending us their operas. Now I’m sending them back.”
Europeras I and II were premiered by the Frankfurt Opera in December 1987 after a delay caused by fire; both call on the full resources of the house and apply the technique of indeterminacy to plot, stage directions, lighting, costuming, props, and sets, as well as to the music, drawn from fragments of the 18th and 19th century repertoire and intermittently drowned out by a taped Opera Mix, “as if you were shouting to someone on the opposite side of the street and a large truck passes by.”
The libretto, in twenty-four scenarios, likewise juxtaposes traditional operatic episodes: the libretto begins “Dressed as an Irish princess, he gives birth; they plot to overthrow the French.” The area of the stage is divided into 64 quadrants corresponding to the I Ching and the nineteen singers share the space with dancers. Cage said “What I wanted to do was to have the programs such that if twelve people were sitting in a row each one would be looking at a different opera.”
There is no conductor; performers are instead guided by large projections of a digital clock according to strict time intervals. Cage even went so far as to hand out two separate sets of librettos to the audience at the premiere, themselves culled from previous operatic works.
Quoted from Wikipedia