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).