Info:
Libretto-Competition:
Opara buffa based on Haruki Murakami’s “The Bakery Attack” und “The Second Bakery Attack”
Required Work
Libretto in English or German language for an opera buffa based on “The Bakery Attack” and “The Second Bakery Attack”, two short stories by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami
Jury
John Lloyd Davies, Heinz Karl Gruber, Johannes Kalitzke,
David Pountney, Caroline Weber
Prizes
The jury will award three prizes of € 6.000,–, € 3.000,– und € 2.000,– to the top-ranked libretti
Submission deadline
May 23rd 2007 (date as postmarked)
Composition and first performance
Composition by Misato Mochizuki till September 2008 based on one of the three awarded libretti. Performances in 2009. World Premiere and First Nights in beginning of 2009 in Switzerland, later on in Vienna.
Libretto-Competition
Info
Terms & Conditions
Submission
Genesis of an Opera
Since 2000 netzzeit initiates New Music Theater on highest level, by giving birth to ideas and projects in its creative studio, or by realising and producing such ideas on initiative of composers, librettists or other artists.
Together with Luzerner Theater and OperaGenesis, London, we published a libretto competition, and now after looking through the submissions an opera will be realised by composer Misato Mochizuki based on Haruki Murakami’s short stories “The Bakery Attack” and “The Second Bakery Attack”.
Why didn't we just ask some well known, prominent and popular author to write a libretto?
Because we wanted to confront our idea to set these to stories in an Opera with the broadest possible spectrum of reactions. Therefore we threw our idea in the air and expected with great curiosity what would come down again.
Because we wanted to communicate with a whole world of known and unknown dramatists, whom we did'nt learn to know so far, and even with dramatists who didn 't know that they are dramatists before having tried to write this libretto.
Because we take the liberty to look for the unknown, including the search for a new way to search.
Because we believe that if you alter your way to search you might find something different.
Here there is something to dare:
We dared to declare and execute the competition, without knowing yet, whether it has caused the golden section, and without knowing if this golden section even exists with those two stories.
Every participant dared to accept the challenge to face up to these two stories.
Her/his high risk was to find her/his own personal way to express them and to get nothing for this great effort - nothing but perfectioning of her/his writing. But we all sent our signals with great courage into this world.
And here are the results:
On 23rd May 2007, the deadline to submit a libretto, we faced 127 libretti that have been created and sent to us! The jury met on July 10th in Bregenz to come to final decisions.
For creating an opera together with composer Misato Mochizuki the jury recommended the following three authors:
Yohanan Kaldi/“Die große Bäckereiattacke”,
Beate Haeckl/“Bäckereiüberfall eins & zwei”,
Carsten Brandau/“bin unter fischen”
Congratulations!
And of course we would like to thank all the 124 participants and their work from the bottom of our heart.
As I understood by the content of the innumerable mails, that have been sent to me, everybody feels more or less disappointed for not being chosen (and who wouldn’t), but—and this is wonderful in a way—nobody seems to regret having participated: Just as we loved to read everybody seemed to have loved to write the libretto.
As I wrote to the participants before: An experience, an intensive time, that can’t be pinched by anybody, not even by calling it a so called “failure”.
Here you may look through a few statistic dates if you like:
Nationalities of authors:
Österreich, Deutschland, Schweiz, Großbritannien, Spanien und Israel.
Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, Spain and Israel.
Germany: 80 participating librettists
Austria: 33 participating librettists
Switzerland: 9 participating librettists
Great Britain: 2 participating librettists
Spain: 1 participating librettist
France: 1 participating librettist
11 have been written in english, 116 in german language
73 libretti have been created by women, 54 by men,
How we will proceed with
the Opera:
At the press conference on October 18th Yohanan Kaldi, Misato Mochizuki, Caroline Weber and Michael Scheidl met in Vienna to start the cooperation between composer and librettist.
There we also debated further accompagning actions to create the Opera.
The most important dates on the way to First Night are:
Release of composed Opera: 30.09.2008
Scores ready: 15.10.2008
Recording for working on the Opera by Klangforum till 31.11.2008 the latest
First Night in Luzern: not before January 2009
Performances in Vienna: February 2009 within 2009 Out of Control, Festival for New Music Theater
Conductor: Johannes Kalitzke
Director: Michael Scheidl
Stage and Costume Design: Nora Scheidl
in Luzern: Luzerner Sinfonieorchester
in Vienna: Klangforum Wien
Soloists on stage: Ensemble des Luzerner Theater/Guests
We appreciated each participant on this competition and of course you always can call me personally for further informations: You may contact me by phone: +43 6991 002 58 98 or via E-Mail (just click) michael.scheidl@netzzeit.at.