Performing: PMCE Parco della Musica Contemporanea Ensemble (Conductor: Tonino Battista), Auditivvokal Dresden (conductor: Olaf Katzer)
Libretto by: Haim Baharier and Magda Poli
String quintet (2 violins, viola, 2 cellos), 5 soloist voices (2 soprano, tenor, 2 basses), 2 percussions, 3 cantors of the 3 monotheistic religions, live electronics 2 narrators and visuals
DUration: 85 minutes
World premiere: Terme di Diocleziano in Rome, Italy May 2018
"A visionary score that whirls together voices, sounds and images in an ancient biblical text, excellent classical performers, ancestral notes of traditional religious choir linked with a powerful video art work. All this is Job, the new Icon-Sonic Opera by the Israeli composer Yuval Avital that will set in the scenographic context of Rome’s Terme di Diocleziano from May 30 to June 1.”
(SkyArte)“An allegorical opera that starts from the biblical text to face the contemporary topic of the fight between Good and Evil.”
(Il Messaggero Daily)“An Opera enclosing evocative and powerful images, beautiful elaborated visuals projected on the millenarian walls of Terme di Diocleziano (…) while the musical ensembles fill the sonic space”
(RAI 3 news)
'Job' by Yuval Avital, icon-sonic opera n.6 is an hour and half long stage work uniting parallel video projections, 2 actors reciting in the local language of the show’s performance; a score for 5 strings (2 violins, viola, 2 cellos), 5 soloist voices (2 soprano, tenor, 2 basses), 2 percussions, 3 cantors of the 3 monotheistic religions and live electronics; all this nested into a new translation, edition and adaptation to libretto by Judaism scholar and philosopher Haim Baharier and theatre critic Magda Poli.
Premiered in Rome’s Terme di Diocleziano from May 30 till June 1st, the opera takes the ancient biblical text and brings it to the heart of humanity’s contemporary ethical clashes between good and evil. Departing from the tragedy of the Jewish Holocaust of the World War II, Yuval, proposes a path of observation of humanity’s atrocities embodied as particles in the corpse of the great ‘Leviathan’ monster, the Grace of waters, the endless powers of the Sun above us, and the silent Job himself - embodied here in the silent presence of Senator Liliana Segre, an Italian Jewish Auschwitz survivor and human rights activist.
Avital’s ‘Job’ presents an allegorical and piercing picture that results from an extensive research carried out by the artist, whose polyhedral nature has become a distinguishing feature in his works. Very different and unexpected elements intertwine, bringing on an intense conversation between national and international excellences. The spectacular images from NASA’s Solar Observatory alternate with precious historical archive materials of RAI Teche, and with the face of Liliana Segre. A symbolical alter ego of Job but also his real embodiment, her face is shown in an intense silent interview with the great PMCE ensemble from Rome’s Auditorium, and with the remarkable vocal soloists from Dresden’s AuditivVokal. By doing so, visual and sound multimedia created by advanced technologies face three religious soloists of ancient monotheistic traditions.
The challenge to turn a Biblical text into a scene libretto was given to the intellectual expert of Jewish culture Haim Baharier and to the theatre critic Magda Poli, who translated the whole Book of Job specially for the event and who gave life not only to a text but also to a long journey of hermeneutic reflections and textual interpretations that are the foundation of the opera. This intense conversation offers the public a new Job, poetic and contemporary, that incarnates the most ferocious tragedies of our time.
Sample score - Download
“I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented”
(Elie Wiesel)