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Find all the information about the symposium on www.obnc.cat!

Wonder who will speak at the symposium?

Today, we put the provisional list of guest speakers online.
Go and have a look at 'Programme & Speakers'!

Also starting from today, you can register yourself for the symposium by filling in the registration form under 'Enrolment procedure'. 

We are looking forward to welcoming you in Barcelona!

We just received the theme of Willem Bruls' lecture

'In the margins of opera' 

On the one hand there is the classical opera libretto, on the other hand there are many new and different forms of librettos and texts for new and different kinds of theatre. Contemporary music theatre is one of the examples where text and music are combined in ways that differ from the classical opera. In my contribution I would like to show three different, atypical and deviant forms of libretto-writing. Firstly my music theatre production Alla Turca - East meets West (Rotterdam 2010), where a new narrative is developed on the basis of seperate existing compositions. Secondly the ballet Shéhérazade (Amsterdam 2008), where a completely new narrative is based on several sources: the photos and films of the Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat and the Egyptian novellist Naguib Mahfouz. Thirdly the play with music Teorema Bochum/Amsterdam/New York 2009), where a new narrative is based on the film and novel by Pasolini. For these three projects I developed and wrote the librettos, texts and/or concepts.

Willem Bruls (Maastricht, 1963) studied ‘Literature Sciences’ and ‘History of Art’ at the free university of Amsterdam. He published several books concerning opera and music theatre, amongst others Godenschemering, about Wagners Ring, and Ontvoering, verleiding en bevrijding, about orientalism in opera. In 2009 his literary essays were gathered in the bookMijn opera. As a journalist, he supplied contributions to several newspapers, including Opernwelt (Germany), De Standaard(Belgium), and The Wall street Journal Europe. As dramaturge, he worked on productions of Il re pastore and Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Antwerp), Pique Dame (Latvian National Opera, Riga), Werther (Theater Erfurt) and Fürst Igor (Aalto-Theater, Essen). He worked together with Pierre Audi on La Juive (Bastille, Paris/DNO, Amsterdam), Partenope (Theater an der Wien) and Orlando furioso (Théâtre des Champs-Élysées). Together with the choreographer Krzystof Pastor, he wrote new librettos for Romeo and Juliet (Scottish Ballet, Glasgow) and Shéhérazade (Het Nationale Ballet, Amsterdam). For the Ruhrtriennale/Toneelgroep Amsterdam , he wrote a play adaptation of Paolini’s Teorema, which was also performed at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York. Bruls is dramaturge for Kameroperahuis and for the Operadagen Rotterdam Festival in the Netherlands. For this last festival, he directed his production Alla Turca - East meets West (2010) and developed several music theatre productions, such as De cornet. He led workshops about libretto writing and contemporary music theatre in Barcelona, Stavanger and Hobart (Tasmania).

Bernhard Glocksin will tell us something more about the contemporary opera pieces of Neuköllner Opera

Singing Avatars, Turkish Tango

Berlin’s Neuköllner Oper creates Opera about our contemporaries

Bernhard Glocksin

Since 30 years Berlin has an opera house, specialized in developing stories about  present topics and figures. At Neuköllner Oper, the plot and its sound (music) are the main protagonists. And therefore Neuköllner Oper produces exclusively original scripts, developed in teamwork by authors, composers, stage-directors, dramaturges and the theatre`s directorate.

Meanwhile more than 150 operas/ plays  in all genres like new opera, adaptations of classical opera and operetta, new forms and experimental opera involving dance, puppets and other performing arts, musicals, opera for young people, education programs and competitions for composers, authors and singers. The main focus are inter-cultural projects like German-Turkish operas/music theatre, a choir based on the idea of diversity, international cooperation and the OPEN OP Festival for alternative opera.

Bernhard Glocksin, artistic director of the Neuköllner Oper will inform about the way of producing and selecting projects of this  unique German opera house.

Bernhard Glocksin: Artistic director and dramaturge in chief at neuköllner oper in Berlin.

He studied music theory, German language and literature and politics at the universities of Colone, Tübingen and Marburg. From 1986 onwards, he worked as dramaturge in Hannover, Zürich und Salzburg. In 1995, he became dramaturge in chief and personal assistant of the artistic director at Staatstheater Mainz, and from 1999 until 2002 dramaturge in chief and vice artistic director of Deutsches Theater in Göttingen.
The focus of his activity is developing new forms in opera at Neuköllner Oper (e.g. BizetLounge:Perlenfischer or Create your life!), training programmes for authors and composers, writing texts for dance theatre, (Salzburg) and music theatre (Julie & Jean, music Gerhard Schedl, debut performance Vienna 2003; HesseIndia, music Raffael Reina, debut performance Amsterdam/Stuttgart/ Vienna 2007/09), director and script author of „Die getauschte Schule“ 2008, „Der Fall Rigoletto“ 2009, “Rheingold Feuerland” 2011. Parallel to that, he has some freelancing projects (Berlinale Talk 2004; coproduction Haus der Kulturen der Welt/schauspielfrankfurt 2004) as well as tutoring (Schauspielakademie Zürich, 1992) and juror activities („Körber Studio Junge Regie“ 2009, ITS Festival Amsterdam 2010). 2010 Leading the festival „OpenOP – European Festival for alternative Opera“