the libretto

Libretto

The Libretto draws upon the images created in the novel by Huxley and explores these images in the context of the contemporary society in Europe. What was once Huxle’s nightmarish fantasy of the future society seems to become a manual of the presence and sheds a blazing light on the politics of inter-human relations in the current world.

„Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of ‚Nineteen Eighty-Four‘ is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in ‚Brave New World‘. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large scale biological and atomic war — in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds.“

Aldous Huxley in a letter to George Orwell

21 October, 1949

Exploring the notion of communication of the future society, as proposed by Huxley, the language of the World State gets form of the globalised version of English, as popularised by mass media and advertisement. The libretto reflects on the language and inter-human communication in the era of time efficiency and social media networks. The inhabitants of the World State communicate using pre-existent short efficient phrases, without reflecting on the actual meaning of their words, neither on the beauty and possibilities of the language. Their communication is shaped by the technology and time/space limitation of social media communication like e-mail, twitter and facebook. The poetry of the language is replaces by brief, catchy and impersonal copywriting.

On the contrary, the language of the Savage Reservation is a dialect, a local version of a language, still able to express the nuances and complexity of human emotions. Libretto explores the opposition of the global uniformed society, and the diversity of small local cultures and languages in Europe. The inhabitants of the Savage Reservation speak a dialect created out of the elements of non-major European languages e.g. Catalan, Polish. The languages represented in the creative team of the project determine the choice for these languages.

musical sketches

 Musical Sketches 

BRAVE NEW WORLD

by Guillermo Martorell Casanovas

The Incubation Room

The Lighthouse Sketch

Choral Example Sketch

The Savage Reservation Sketch

the scenerio break down

SCENERIO

 PROLOGUE

IMAGE 1

Interview and Kick

[lighthouse]

John, Reporter

IMAGE 2

Thoughts of Lenina and Self-Whipping

[in front of the lighthouse]

John, offstage voices of other protagonists (events from the past coming back in John‘s head)


OVERTURE

(John’s musical reminiscence)

ACT I | WORLD STATE

SCENE 1

Hatchery and Conditioning Centre Lecture

IMAGE 1

Introduction to Bokanovsky‘s Process

[hatchery – fertilizing and bottling room]

Director, Henry Foster

students (or audience as students?), workers (incl. Lenina Crowne)

IMAGE 2

Conditioning for Alpha-Plus Intellectuals

[hatchery - decanting room]

Director, Henry Foster

students (or audience as students?), workers (nurses), children

IMAGE 3

Hypnopaedia Session – Elementary Class Consciousness

[hatchery – hypnopaedia room]

Director, students

Voice (voice of Mustapha Mond)

children, nurse

SCENE 2

Dressing Rooms [simultaneous: 3 locations]

IMAGE 1

Children’s Erotic Play and Mond on Family Life

[hatchery – garden]

Mustapha Mond

Director, students

children, nurse

IMAGE 2­

[girl’s dressing room]

Fanny Crowne, Lenina Crowne

IMAGE 3

[boy’s dressing room]

Henry Foster, Bernard Marx

SCENE 3

Lift

[lift in hatchery]

Lenina Crowne, Bernard Marx

male crowd

[lift in hatchery becomes lift in bureau of propagada]

Bernard Marx, Helmholtz Watson

female crowd

SCENE 4

World State Rituals

IMAGE 1 [simultaneous: 2 locations]

Concert and Soma-holidays

[Henry’s apartment house]

Lenina Crowne, Henry Foster

Solidarity service

[Fordson Community Singery centre]

Bernard Marx, ensemble (all together: 12)

IMAGE 2

Lake District

[lake district]

Lenina Crowne, Bermard Marx

ACT II | SAVAGE RESERVATION

SCENE 1

Savage Reservation

IMAGE 1

Savage Reservation Ritual

[Savage Reservation]

Indians

John

Lenina Crowne, Bernard Marx

IMAGE 2

John’s flashback - Tomakin’s Story

[Savage Reservation]

John, Linda

Lenina Crowne, Bernard Marx

INTERMEZZO

SCENE 2

WORLD STATE

Public Example: ‚My father!‘

[hatchery – fertilizing room]

Director, Henry Foster, Workers

Bernard Marx, Linda, John

ACT III | WORLD STATE

Scene 1

[simultaneously: 3 locations]

IMAGE 1

School Presentation

[school]

John, Bernard Marx

Provost, Head Mistress

pupils (or audience as pupils?)

IMAGE 2

Letter: ‚Surprisingly little astonishment‘

[letter]

Bernard Marx, Mustapha Mond

IMAGE 3

[Bernard’s apartment]

Linda’s Soma-holidays

Dr Shaw, John

SCENE 2

1st Date (John, Lenina)

IMAGE 1

Dressing room

[girl’s dressing room]

Fanny Crowne, Lenina Crowne

IMAGE 2

Movies

[at the movies]

John, Lenina Crowne

SCENE 3

Bernard’s Party

IMAGE 1

Failed Party

[Bernard’s apartment vs John’s bedroom]

John, Bernard Marx,

party crowd including:

Lenina Crowne, Henry Foster, Helmholtz Watson,

Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury

Head Mistress, Provost, Dr Shaw

IMAGE 2

‚After-party‘ (incl. reading Romeo and Juliet)

the creative team - interactive video design

Tomek Jarolim- Interactive video designer

Graduate of the University Institute of Technology in Computer Engineering and of the École Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence, Tomek Jarolim is a visual artist and interaction designer. His installations question the status of the viewer, and the viewable itself, through research on the digital light and the color of the pixel. In 2008, it presents Shades of white, a contemporary dance piece created with bruno, within the framework of Ballet Preljocaj « Les Affluents » Festival. Award winner of the FACE Grant (French american cultural exchange), he goes to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he focuses on a sound piece, ut queant laxis, which will be choreographed by beth jucovy for « Innovation in Dance » Festival in New York.

In 2009, he exhibits Invisible at the 14th Young Artists Biennial in Skopje, which explore a more sensitive work that he follows at Diip/EnsadLab, a research programme of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. He develops research on interactive lights, especially with The Eyes Closed and diffraction, presented in Fabfest 2012, at La Gaîté Lyrique.

Tomek Jarolim continues his lighting explorations, through various residencies : the light of the stars in a residency at the Observatory of Haute Provence / CNRS, and traditional and digital theatrical lights at the Agora Theater – Scene Nationale d’Evry de de l’Essonne.

Meanwhile, he works on projects such as Augmented Window by Thierry Fournier at Centre Pompidou, Discontrol Party by Samuel Bianchini at La Gaîté Lyrique or Browse by Motion of the Institute of Research and Innovation of Centre Pompidou (IRI) with Thierry de Mey within the framwork of Futur-en-Seine.

In 2011, he signs the digital creation of Ring Saga, an opera staged by Antoine Gindt according to Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung, a project for which he also works on a « rêverie » entitled Wanderer Postscript.

http://www.tomek.fr/ 

 

the creative team - choreographic assistant

Guillaume Marie- Assistant Choreographry

 

Guillaume Marie was born in Caen in 1980 and currently lives in Paris. He studied at the Ballet School of The Paris Opera between 1990 and 1995 (director Claude Bessy) and at the Conservatory National of Music and Dance in Paris between 1995 and 1999 (director Quentin Rouiller) where he graduated. Right after his last year at the CSMDP Guillaume headed to

contemporary dance.

In 2000 he began his career as a dancer/performer with Maryse Delente/Ballet du Nord, then left France and worked for few years in Holland with Itzik Galili/Galili Dance, Suzy Blok, Martin Butler, Piet Rogie/Rogie Company.

Through these works, Guillaume began to confront himself with more theatrical scores, and the Body Art aspect of Performance.

In 2003 he met Jan Fabre, for which he had a great curiosity since his studies at the Conservatory and played in Je suis sang in Avignon, Antwerp, New York, Tokyo, Melbourne, Barcelona and Mullhouse until 2007. This collaboration was the opportunity to question and push his own boundaries and to deepen his experience in improvisation.

He participated in other projects in Belgium with Thierry Smits/Compagnie Thor (Reliefs of a banquet) and Claudio Bernardo (The library).

Back to France, he played in the piece created by Herve Koubi Abattoirs…..fantaisies in 2006. In 2007-2008, he had the lead role in Guilherme Botelho’s/Alias Compagnie Approcher la poussière, a dance-theater piece which premiered at the «Festival de la Bâtie» in Geneva.

He also performed in the singing tour conceived by Jonathan Capdevielle Jonathan’s covering created in Tanz In August (Berlin) in 2007. Impressed by the universe of the choreographer/director/visual artist Gisèle Vienne, Guillaume joined her and Dennis Cooper on the project Kindertotenlieder (Premiere in Brest, Antipodes 2007). A piece combining dance, literature, music and puppets in which he experimented new qualities as a performer and dancer. He continued his collaboration with Gisèle Vienne and interpreted Showroomdummies (creation Antipodes 2009 in collaboration with Etienne Bideau-Rey). Both shows are currently on tour.

Since 2005, Guillaume develops the artistic projects of Tazcorp, a company created in collaboration with costume designer Cédrick Debeuf (Dior, Lacroix...) and with various international artists coming from many different fields such as dance, performance, philosophy, make-up, music, video and theater. His work, at the intersection of several disciplines expressed though various mediums questions the Human, its social framework, fantasies, and its inconsistencies.

Specifically, Guillaume is inspired by various famous and highly symbolic news events and further more by how politics can be embodied though poetry, visual theater and choreography. He likes to investigate them in relationship with the body, in order to question and to create some abstract or symbolic material where facts and fictions are structured in a dramaturgical maze.

 www.tazcorp.org

 
 

the creative team - Librettist and Dramaturgist

Kystian Lada - Librettist and Dramaturgist

Recent work samples:

• Dodenklas: Requiem, a music theater answer to Tadeusz Kantor’s The Dead Class (2011) // libretto and dramaturgy: Krystian Lada
• Tel Aviv, a theater performance based on the novel by Katharina Hacker (2011) // stage adaptation and dramaturgy: Krystian Lada
• Container, a site-pecific music theatre adaptation of Lukas Moodysson’s art house film (2011) // stage adaptation and dramaturgy: Krystian Lada
• Only My Pen Tolerates My Choices, a performing-concert by Barbara Morgenstern with the text written by Afghan women (2011) // concept and directing: Krystian Lada

website: krystianlada.com

Opera dramaturge, librettist and curator based in Amsterdam and working internationally. After working for some years for Polish television networks and media production houses as copywriter, creative director and director, Krystian studied dramaturgy and followed a research program in literary studies at the University of Amsterdam. He collaborates as a dramaturge with among others De Nederlandse Opera, De Munt in Brussels, Grand Theatre-National Opera in Warsaw, Nationale Reisopera, Kameroperahuis, Nederlands Theater Festival, International Choreographic Arts Centre in Amsterdam and the laboratory for the experimental opera Studio Minailo. His libretti were presented by the Opera Days in Rotterdam and Stadsfestival Zwolle. Krystian gained assistant director experience while working on opera productions by Pierre Audi and Richard Jones. He collaborates with contemporary opera composers Paul Oomen and Kasia Glowicka.

Krystian initiated and has been curating several periodic events in Amsterdam, such as the European Opera Days in the Netherlands, a creative activism and professional empowerment program Fringe Fuel for the Amsterdam Fringe Festival, and the United States of Opera – a research and expertise platform for opera professionals concerned with the form and function of the art form opera in the contemporary society. He coordinated international cultural projects for the Goethe-Institut and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Warsaw. Stimulating meaningful encounters between practitioners across various professional sectors; empowering and leading international teams of creative professionals; actively exploring new models for opera engagement with society; bringing opera to a contemporary artistic and cultural context – this is what drives Krystian in his every day praxis in-between opera and creative activism.

the creative team- direction

Martin Butler - Director

Martin Butler is a British born interdisciplinary artist, stage director and curator based in Berlin. He was trained in Drama at Manchester University, and then later Choreography and Performance at Amsterdam School of the Arts, in the Netherlands.

His work always bridged and combined various disciplines, dance, theatre, music, film, performance, new media, and fashion, and through this interdisciplinary approach his work explores the new dramatic that the combination of different genres facilitate.

His new media and installation work has been shown in the Istanbul Modern, Beijing Design Week, European Media Arts Festival in Osnabrück, Fundación Telefonica in Lima, Istanbul Design Biennale, Amsterdam Museum, Pixxelpoint Festival in Slovenia, Olympus Photographry Playground, Berlin, shaded view on fashion film festival, Centre Pompidou Paris, Kasteel Keukenhof, the Netherlands, the Museum of Modern Art in Arnhem, Marres, Maastricht, Salon Amsterdam, and Mediamatic, amongst many others.

Since 1998 he has been creating performance work, at various theatres and festivals internationally.

From 2004-2014 he worked as artistic consultant for Mediamatic, Amsterdam, developing exhibitions and events, including the Amsterdam Bienalle and the IK, IK, IK series of exhibitions dealing with self representation.

In 2010-2012 he collaborated as researcher and co-writer, for a project of Delft University and European Institute of Technology led by Prof. Caroline Nevejan, examining performance presence and trust in the internet age, the book " Witnessing You" was published in November 2012.

Since 2003 he has also been working as a commercial Art Director, concept developer and installation designer for fashion related events, and has collaborated with Diesel, Diesel Black Gold, Olympus, ELLE, ID&T, Moschino, Harmont and Blaine, MCQ, See by Chloe, Aliveshoes, Camel active, Mercedes Benz Dutch Fashion Awards, Johan Cruijff, FILA, Tomorrow World, And Beyond, and Andrea Crews, amongst many others.

Currently he is working as dramaturgist for the Opera/Dance film “Symmetry” by director Ruben van Leer in collaboration with CERN (European Nuclear Research Centre), CTM Pictures and NTR Podium which will premiere on Dutch television in Spring 2015.

He is working as director and scenographer for the Opera project "Perseus & Andromeda", together with Italian ensemble L'Aura Rilucente, which introduces children to the world of the classics and baroque music, combining performance, shadow play and opera and is developing a new piece based upon the life of Gianni Versace with ensemble “Brand, Bauer & Frick”  for season 2015/ 2016.

http://www.martinbutlers.com

the creative team - music

The Creative Team

Guillermo Martorell Casanovas- Composer

Guillermo Martorell Casanovas is a composer, born September 16, 1983 in Barcelona.

He received his first piano lessons at the age of 4, and subsequently studied guitar. He later studied composition with Gabriel Brncic and Arnau Bataller, at ESMUC (Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya), where he graduated, and with David Padrós at el Conservatori del Liceu, in Barcelona. He has composed electronic, choral, chamber and orchestral music, as well as music for five short films. Recent premieres include Arsis (2013), a score for Telma Llos’ short film, premiered live at l’Auditori in Barcelona by the Bcn216 chamber ensemble; Scie (2013), for orchestra, comissioned by Orquestra Simfònica de Sant Cugat; a We No Longer Know (2013), a short opera piece in collaboration with stage director Martin Butler; as well as Intende voci orationis meae (2012), for choir, comissioned by Cor de Cambra Francesc Valls and which premiered at the Barcelona Cathedral.

He was selected as participant in the 2012 NYU/ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop in New York, where he had the chance to work and study with teachers such as Tim Starnes, Sean Callery, Mark Snow and Ira Newborn, as well as to record his music with some of the top studio musicians in New York.

As a performer, one of his early projects was electronic music duo Mr. Hubba & el Mono Inventor, in collaboration with Miguel Yuste.

They made their debut at the Northern California Experimental Music Festival in Sacramento -Noisefest- in 2004, and toured Europe and Japan, playing in places such as Tate Britain in London, The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and in Spain, in festivals such as Sònar, LEM and Periferias.
The duo released a first album, Stargarder (2006, South China Sea Music), after being recruited by former Beck/Siouxsie and the Banshees collaborator David Brown, from Brazzaville.
After their dissolution, the box set Vida y Muerte de Mr. Hubba & el Mono Inventor (2010, Bankrobber), a collection of recordings from the 3 years that the band lasted, was released, and received rave reviews from the Spanish press. Chilean electronic composer and dj, former SuperCollider member Cristian Vogel mixed nearly all of their recordings.

He has also been part of the Barcelona-based orchestra Usted es un Do, dedicated to performing Terry Riley’s In C, playing guitar, and is currently involved in newly formed experimental-rock band Valentina, playing guitar, synths, piano and composing.

He also plays and records with singer-songwriter Maria Rodés and electronic pop-rock group Mazoni, as a guitarist and keyboardist.

Staging and direction

Staging and Direction

The BRAVE NEW WORLD, is Martin Butler's second staging of a new Opera Project. His past work has always bridged and combined various artistic and design disciplines, in order to explore the boundaries of the New Dramatic. Although highly interdisciplinary as a maker, the body, its physicality and its representation has always played a central and pivotal role in his work.

Butler has been drawn to the world of Opera, by its inherent combination of disciplines to create a work stronger than its individual arts forms, with Opera being the true pinnacle of interdisciplinary collaboration, but has noticed, a strong lack of physical performability in the abilities of many opera singers, compared to the other dramatic arts. He is striving with this project, as director, to find a true and emotional and physical support for the singers, allowing the voice to be an intergrated tool within the physical expression of the performer, in order to convey to the public a more sincere richer, honest and more accessible communication with the public.

The BRAVE NEW WORLD, deals with three main areas of physicality, the sterile, constructed, mechanical, selfless, emotionless, soma induced state of Act 1, the ritualistic, tribal almost animalistic ego driven world of Act 2, and the clash of these two opposing states in Act 3.

With John the Savage, serving as a tortured poetic innocent soul that unwittingly evokes this chaos, unleashing their lust and desires, leading to his guilt and internal turmoil, that pushes him into taking his own life.

A sacrifice of passion to save a soulless world from the pains of what it is to be human.

The emphasis on the varying states of physical expression will be utilised in all aspects in the direction and staging of the work, with the physical and the performative aspect serving to support the drive of the music and the Libretto, aiming to create a series of highly charged images and scenes that are equally relevant to the dialogues with in the world of contemporary performance practice and applied cutting edge aesthetics from the world of fashion and design.

For some scenes we will collaborate together with the french polish interactive video artist Tomek Jarolim, who has been developing a project called dream machine that allows for the hynopsis of large groups of people, to use interactive video as a another element in the project.

the music

The Music

Ever since he was 15 years old and first read Aldous Huxley’s novel, Guillermo Martorell Casanovas has dreamt of bringing it to life with music.

The state of the world right now, a world in which a lot of Huxley’s premonitions have become part of an accepted reality, makes a production like this all the more pertinent, relevant, and urgent. 

The music for a Brave New World opera must be one of wide emotional range, using a big amount of timbral resources, from electronics, to string and brass sections, to a choir depicting the sense of community both in the Brave New World and in the Savage Reservation.

The soloist singers should be the main and also some of secondary characters in Huxley’s novel: Bernard, Lenina, Linda, John The Savage, The Director, etc.. A choir will join the main characters onstage, and will act as the “voice of the community” in both the Brave New World and the Savage Reservation.

Passages of delicate, emotionally detached, repetitive music in the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre (Act I), that reflect the ceaseless work of machines in a mass production line, where everything seems to work like a clock, hypnopaedic suggestions sung in a mechanical manner, by a faceless mass, the choir, should alternate with the intimate mildly disapproving thoughts of Bernard Marx at the beginning of the story.

There should also be, at certain points in the story, diegetic music, depictions of the “synthetic music” that Huxley envisioned and described with such wonderful detail. “Super” or “augmented” instruments as they appear in the Solidarity Service –as Huxley describes them; “near-wind or super-string”-.

Ideally, an ensemble of onstage musicians should be used for this purpose, playing instruments outside the realm of the typical contemporary ensemble, such as the Octobass, the Baschet Cristal or the SubContrabass Saxophone, to name only a few.

It will be very interesting to play the distant, futuristic music of this Brave New World, as well as very visually appealing, suggesting new instrumental formations for the music of the future, different from our contemporary Western symphony orchestras, jazz groups, or rock bands.

It could also be done with more typical orchestral instruments, but processed with live electronics, and/or electronic music generated by live synthesizer, setting the sound for these scenes apart from the rest, as to emphasize the futuristic aspect of the music.

 Act II must be filled with texturally rich, agressive tribal pieces when depicting the rites of the Savage Reservation (Malpaís). These music, even if diegetic, doesn’t need its source onstage. With percussive, industrial timbres as the main resource, other instruments might come into play: not only Western symphonic percussion, but other instruments from around the world -ie. Japanese Taikos-, as well as “prepared” instruments such as piano, double basses, and other instruments from the main ensemble that might be made to adopt other forms, especially treated to act more like percussion instruments, for the Second Act. This would be coupled with electronic pre-recorded percussion.

The arrival of the Savage to the Brave New World (Act III) must necessarily fuse the two kinds of music, starting with music like that of Act I, the “tribal” aspects of the music growing more and more present as the character realizes how much he loathes life in this Brave New World.

John’s character is joined by a choir of curious New World citizens in the final scene at the lighthouse, leaving John alone as the only soloist singer in the work, among the noise, orgy and drowning laughter of the choir.

Note on the sketches presented

The musical sketches presented are, in a very rough form, just sketches on the texture and colour of certain scenes, and an idea of their general character.