FULL Jedino lice sreće or The Only Face of Happiness – A Tribute to the Haydn Brothers Cetinje 2024 Sara Vujošević-Javanović, Dimitrije Grinih

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: Jedino lice sreće or The Only Face of Happiness  
• Composer: Haydn Franz Joseph, Haydn Michael Johann   
• Libretto: Sara Vujošević-Javanović    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Royal Theatre Zetski dom, Cetinje, Montenegro  
• Recorded: September 29 & 30, 2024
• Type: Staged Opera Live

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

Words from the author of the conceptual concept
Attempts to identify the forms and types of love left to us by the Ancient Greeks probably best convey in the 21st century all the diversity and complexity of this feeling, which fundamentally shapes the destiny of every human being: “eros” – passionate and romantic love, “philia” – friendly attachment, “storge” – family attachment, “agape” – sublime love for one’s neighbor, “pragma” – reasonable and stable attachment, “mania” – passionate and obsessive infatuation, “ludus” – sexual and fleeting pleasure… And although different aspects of sublimity or profaneness are manifested in all recognized models, the essential pretension of love is reflected in a unique and eternal the aspiration to experience happiness, which is almost always achieved in a relationship with the Other, or together with the Other. Love and happiness are experienced in different ways, because they are deeply shaped by philosophical and religious reflections, a moving story about love and happiness. In doing so, we kept in mind that no serious musical genre depicts the dynamics of our everyday efforts to (un)successfully capture a moment of happiness as comic opera does. In addition, no form conveys the philosophical depth of understanding the problem of love better than a cantata or a symphony. The comic opera “The Double Bassist from Wergl”, which forms one of the two main focuses of the play “The Only Face of Happiness”, was written in 1776 by Johann Michael Haydn, the younger brother of the famous Austrian composer and “father of the symphony” – Franz Joseph Haydn. This opera is dominated by the comic image of a wife who, tired of her husband’s constant alcoholism, decides to punish him and not let him into the house. The cantata of the elder brother, “Ovation” from 1768, like any composition written in Latin for the purpose of church celebration, relies on musical and philosophical reflection on the idea of ​​love. Here, the composer consciously chose a luxurious style in the tradition of Italian opera seria, which at the time of the creation of the work, although in decline, still retained its popularity. For the opera performance “The Only Face of Happiness”, three arias from the aforementioned work were chosen, written in the spirit of unsurpassed mastery, which consequently represent a special challenge for every vocal performer – the so-called three virtuoso opera characters named Theology, Courage and Temperance. It is these arias that shape the key idea of ​​the entire artistic and intellectual undertaking of the project “The Only Face of Happiness”: love brings happiness, but the path to happiness requires restraint, moderation and wisdom. In order to build a performance that is as homogeneous as possible, structurally and musically, I decided on the first part of Symphony No. 6 (“Morning”) by Franz Joseph Haydn, because it is written in the style of the Italian concerto grosso (large concert for instrumental ensemble), but also because it is close in expression to the selected arias from the cantata “Ovation”. The opera performance also includes the second part of the composer’s Symphony No. 13, written in the spirit of the
operatic Italian adagio cantabile (singing on a legato/uninterrupted basis), in which the cello part plays the role of a kind of virtuoso performer. The first part of the performance ends with a buffoonish (Italian comic) finale full of Haydn’s famous “sunny humor” (B. Asafiev’s expression)
of Symphony No. 88, stylistically close to the zingspiel (comic German opera) by Johann Michael Hein, which is performed in the second part of the performance. The theatrical form of the piece “The Only Face of Happiness” and its musical dramaturgy should reflect not only the stylistically and musicologically logical structure of the entire evening work, but also the delicate, sensitive work on the gradation of sound that, in its final form, is “perceived” equally emotionally and intellectually. The musical horizon of this opera performance exudes a wealth of metaphors and emotional allusions, while the action unfolds on a subtle level of language and movement that unites philosophy and art, synthesizing in the final

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