THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
by M.M.Campos-Pons
music by PAOLA PRESTINI libre>o by ROYCE VAVREK direcCon by KARMINA ŠILEC
visual design by MARIA MAGDALENA CAMPOS-PONS
PROCESS
Cast: five older singers, one young child, a mixed choir (min. 20), Jeffrey Zeigler’s solo cello, electronics and foley
Expected premiere: Autumn, 2023
We are all aging from the day we are born. Our egos, just as San:ago’s ego, are transcendent objects that don’t dwell in our consciousness and can only be viewed from a distance. Aging can contain the anxiety of
loosing of dignity and iden:ty.
The dramaturgical arc requires the contribu:ons of a number of oral histories that we will collect from elders who will speak to the effects of aging on their minds and bodies in rela:on to their life and work. Tes:monies of a gardener, a sex worker, a singer, and a contemporary fisherman, will create
portraitures that will be woven into the fabric of Hemingway’s narra:ve.
This approach will combine English, Spanish, Croa:an, Italian and Lukumi languages.
The theme that revolves around the Old man and the Sea resembles a translucent curtain, behind which the viewers – while perceiving the events on the sea, far out in Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba – stay well
aware of the fact that what they are watching is "neither the right :me, nor the place of ac:on".
Director Karmina Šilec will employ her ar:s:c concept “Choregie”. A 'meta composi:on' will be created by posi:oning different music, text, drama, movement and visual materials into a bigger composi:on.
Treatment of these theatrical elements will be based on musical principles and composi:onal techniques, thus musical thinking will apply to the performance as a whole.
The goal is to develop a music theatre that will break down boundaries between the art disciplines and in turn became a metaphor for the opening up of thought, percep:on, and experience on the Aging of People
and of Things.
MUSIC
Religious allusions embedded in “The Old Man and the Sea” link to the holy, and relate to a life/death lens.
The form of a Mass / Requiem within the opera brings a sacred nature to San:ago's achieving divinity of manhood.
Choir and solo voices will use extended vocal techniques; tradi:onal opera elements will hybridize with electroacous:c music and live sound processing.
REFLECTIONS ON THE WORK
In this project we are interested not in how to avoid becoming old, but rather how to avoid becoming the other.
Our egos, just as Santiago’s ego, are transcendent objects that don’t dwell in our consciousness and can only be viewed from a distance. Aging can contain the anxiety of losing dignity and identity. Older people often grow old feeling alienated, excluded, oppressed, and being treated as if they are dying.
We wish to investigate this particular place in a person’s life, often filled with ageism, prejudice,
stigmatization, discrimination, and oppression aimed at a particular person or group of people because of their years lived.
Fishing and the sea nowadays:
Global warming, combined with the negative impacts of numerous other human activities is
devastating our ocean, with alarming declines in fish stocks, the death of our reefs, and sea level rise that could displace hundreds of millions of people. Overfishing is another major issue of our time.
Fisheries and workers at sea have some of the most dangerous jobs on Earth; slavery at sea is a massive problem. In context, over 4,500 US soldiers were killed in the Iraq War over the course of 15 years. But during that same time, 360,000 fisheries workers died doing their job; an estimated 24,000 workers die every year. Our storytelling breathes within this contemporary framework …
by M.M.Campos-Pons
CREATIVE TEAM
PAOLA PRESTINI Composer
Through an illustrious career being equal parts creator and connector, composer Paola PresCni is known both for her
“otherworldly...outright gorgeous” music (The New York Times), as well as the “visionary-in-chief” (Time Out New York) and Co- Founder/ArCsCc Director of the non-profit music organizaCon NaConal Sawdust. As the Wall Street Journal says, many recognize PresCni for “pushing the boundaries of classical music through collaboraCons.”
Composer Paola PresCni has collaborated with poets, filmmakers, and scienCsts in large-scale mulCmedia works that chart her interest in extra-musical themes ranging from the cosmos to the environment. Her composiCons have been commissioned and performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Barbican Centre, Cannes Film FesCval, Carnegie Hall, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Kennedy Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Los Angeles Opera, among others. She created the largest communal VR work with The Hubble Cantata, and was part of the New York Philharmonic’s legendary Project 19 iniCaCve in a project with Maria Popova, and has wri>en and produced large scale projects like the eco-documentary The Colorado narrated by Mark Rylance (premiered and commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Houston Da Camera Series) and the lauded opera theater work Aging Magician (premiered and commissioned by the Walker Arts Center and the Krannert Center, with performances at ASU, the New Victory Theater and San Diego Opera).
PresCni is known for her genre- and glass ceiling-breaking roles, including being the first woman in the New Works IniCaCve with her grand opera Edward Tulane (Minnesota Opera), and
bringing arCficial intelligence and disability visibility/impact together in the chamber opera Sensorium Ex (Atlanta Opera and Beth Morrison Projects for the Prototype FesCval). Recent works with collaborator Royce Vavrek include Silent Light (Banff Centre), where she was also on faculty, Yoani Songs, on the life of Cuban blogger and philologist, and "Film SClls," a project for mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliod that dramaCzes four of Cindy Sherman's iconic photographs. Her upcoming works include piano concertos for Awadagin Pra> and A Far Cry, and Lara Downes with the Louisville Symphony, Oregon Bach FesCval, and The Ravinia FesCval.
She is the co-founder and arCsCc director of the Brooklyn based arts insCtuCon and incubator, NaConal Sawdust, and as part of her commitment to the next generaCon and equity, she started the Hildegard CompeCCon for emerging female, trans, and non-binary composers and the Blueprint Fellowship for emerging composers with The Juilliard School. She was a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow and a Sundance Fellow, has been in residence at the Park Avenue Armory and MASS MoCA, and was a graduate of the Juilliard School.
ROYCE VAVREK Libredst
Royce Vavrek is a Canada-born, Brooklyn-based libredst and lyricist who has been called “the indie Hofmannsthal” (The New Yorker) a
“Metastasio of the downtown opera scene” (The Washington Post), “an exemplary creator of operaCc prose” (The New York Times), and “one of the most celebrated and sought afer libredsts in the world” (CBC
Radio). His opera “Angel’s Bone” with composer Du Yun was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Royce has worked extensively with composer Paola PresCni, first on the song cycle "Yoani," inspired by the blog posts of Yoani Sanchez, and then on "The Hubble Cantata," a virtual reality oratorio produced by
VisionIntoArt/NaConal Sawdust in associaCon with Beth Morrison Projects. They recently presented the workshop premiere of “Silent Light,” an opera based on the Cannes Jury Prize-winning film by Carlos Reygadas at the Banff Centre for CreaCvity, a collaboraCon with the director Thaddeus Strassberger, and are currently working on a new opera inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” They are also developing
"Film SClls," a project for mezzo-soprano Eve Gigliod that dramaCzes four of Cindy Sherman's iconic photographs.
With composer Missy Mazzoli he wrote “Song from the Uproar,” premiered by Beth Morrison Projects in 2012, and subsequently seen in mulCple presentaCons around the country. Their second opera, an adaptaCon of Lars von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves,” premiered at Opera Philadelphia, co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects, and directed by James Darrah to criCcal acclaim in September of 2016. The work won the 2017 Music CriCcs AssociaCon of North America award for Best New Opera and was nominated for Best World Premiere at the 2017 InternaConal Opera Awards. Their next opera, an adaptaCon of Karen Russell’s short story
“Proving Up,” was commissioned and presented by Washington NaConal Opera, Opera Omaha and The Miller Theatre in 2018, was a finalist for the MCANA Best New Opera Award of that year. They are currently developing a grand opera for Opera Philadelphia as well as an adaptaCon of George Saunders’ Booker Prize-winning novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” for The Metropolitan Opera.
Royce is co-ArCsCc Director of The Coterie, an opera-theater company founded with Tony- nominee Lauren Worsham. He holds a BFA in Filmmaking and CreaCve WriCng from Concordia University’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema in Montreal and an MFA from the Graduate Musical Theater WriCng Program at New York University. He is an alum of American Lyric Theater’s Composer Libredst Development Program.
KARMINA ŠILEC Director
Karmina Šilec has brought freshness and originality to the world of music and theatre. As a theatre director, conductor and composer she has projects with various companies: drama and opera houses, fesCvals and ensembles worldwide.
She has developed the arCsCc concept Choregie – a theatre driven by music, which focuses on the creaCon process that brings the musical noCon of composing to the theatrical aspects of performing and staging. Her projects are provocaCve, daring; her ideas break taboos, those of the society as well as of music (The New York Times: ... vibrantly theatrical, genre- blurring, unusual in its techniques, eclecCc in its musical style and poliCcally charged ... ). In a creaCve process Šilec is interested in the things that do not only have an unambiguous meaning. Her choregie projects are 'theatrical' but 'dramaCc' comes from the way how materials are used and performed, and not through ”acCng” in a classical sense.
With her boldness, provocaCveness and erudiCon Karmina Šilec transformed various ensembles into superior arCsCc formaCons of the highest rank (Opera News/Opera Guild: ...
terpsichorean radicalism... aural equivalent of Bausch’s Tanztheater ... ). Her ensembles and producCons have received many awards and have been performed at most presCgious fesCvals and stages worldwide, such as the Prototype FesCval NYC (USA), Operadagen Ro>erdam (NL), Moscow Easter FesCval (RU), Dresdner Musikfestspiele (DE), Auditorium, Rome (IT), Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space (JP), St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall (RU), Esplanade (SG),
Ruhrtriennale (DE), FesCval d'Automne á Paris (FR), Holland FesCval (NL), Golden Mask (RU), Melbourne FesCval (AU), Teatro Colon (AR) and others; and were broadcasted by the EBU and Eurovision.
Karmina Šilec was awarded with highest prizes for her work: Music Theatre Now award in the category Music Beyond Opera (by the InternaConal Theatre InsCtute), was nominated for the presCgious Europe Theatre Prize – New Theatrical RealiCes (EPTR), won the Golden Mask
theatre award (together with Heiner Goebbels), Robert Edler award for excepConal contribuCon to the world choir movement, Sterija award for for original theatre music, the main Ford Award for the preservaCon of natural and cultural heritage, and more than 20 other highest
internaConal awards. In 2018-2019 she was a fellow at Harvard University / Radcliffe InsCtute for advanced studies, she received Hewle> FoundaCon 50 Arts Commission for theatre, music theatre and spoken word for 2018 - 2022.
She is arCsCc director of world well-known vocal theatre Carmina Slovenica and of Newmusic theatre Choregie.
MARIA MAGDALENA CAMPOS- PONS Visuals
María Magdalena Campos-Pons was born in in 1959 in the province of Matanzas, in the town of La Vega, Cuba. She grew up on a sugar plantaCon in a family with Nigerian, Hispanic and
Chinese roots. Her Nigerian ancestors were brought to Cuba as slaves in the 19th century and passed on tradiCons, rituals, and beliefs. Her polyglot heritage profoundly influences Campos- Pons’ arCsCc pracCce, which combines diverse media including photography, performance, painCng, sculpture, film, and video. Her work is autobiographical, invesCgaCng themes of history, memory, gender and religion and how they inform idenCty. Through deeply poeCc and haunCng imagery, Campos-Pons evokes stories of the Trans-AtlanCc slave trade, indigo, and sugar plantaCons, Catholic and Santeria religious pracCces, and revoluConary uprisings.
In the late 1980s, Campos-Pons taught at the presCgious InsCtuto Superior de Arte in Havana and gained an internaConal reputaCon as an exponent of the New Cuban Art movement that arose in opposiCon to Communist repression on the island. In 1991, she emigrated to Boston, where she conCnues to live and work. She has had solo exhibiCons at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the NaConal Gallery of Canada, among other disCnguished insCtuCons. She has presented over 30 solo performances commissioned by insCtuCons including the Guggenheim and The Smithsonian’s NaConal Portrait Gallery. She has parCcipated in the Venice Biennale, the Dakar Biennale, Johannesburg Biennial, Documenta 14, the Guangzhou Triennial and is included in Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA and Prospect.4 Triennial. In October 2017 she will receive the endowed Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Campos-Pons’ works are in over 30 museum collecCons including the Smithsonian InsCtuCon, The Whitney, the Art InsCtute of Chicago, the NaConal Gallery of Canada, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Perez Art Museum, Miami and the Fogg Art Museum.
JEFFREY ZEIGLER Cellist
Jeffrey Zeigler is one of the most innovaCve and versaCle cellists of our Cme. He has been described as “fiery” and a player who performs
“with unforced simplicity and beauty of tone” by the New York Times.
Acclaimed for his independent streak, Zeigler has commissioned dozens of works and is admired as a potent collaborator and a unique improviser. Zeigler is the recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize, the Polar Music Prize, the President’s Merit Award from the NaConal Academy of Recorded Arts (Grammy’s), the Chamber Music America NaConal Service Award and The Asia Society's Cultural Achievement Award.
Jeffrey Zeigler was the cellist of the internaConally renowned Kronos Quartet for eight seasons.
Since moving on from the quartet in 2013 he has built a mulCfaceted career that has led to collaboraCons and tours with a wide array of arCsts from Yo-Yo Ma and Roomful of Teeth to Tanya Tagaq and Hauschka, and from Philip Glass and John Corigliano to Laurie Anderson and John Zorn. He has also performed as a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Royal Danish Radio Symphony and the Ulster Orchestra under the batons of JoAnn Falle>a, Dennis Russell Davies, Peter Oundjian and Dmitry Sitkovetsky.
Mr. Zeigler has released dozens of recordings for Nonesuch Records, Deutsche Grammophon, Cantaloupe and Smithsonian Folkways and has appeared with Norah Jones on her album Not Too Late on Blue Note Records. Zeigler can also be heard on the film soundtrack for Paolo SorrenCno’s Academy Award winning film, La Grande Bellezza, as well as Clint Mansell’s Golden Globe nominated soundtrack to the Darren Aronofsky film, The Fountain. Zeigler can also be seen making an on screen cameo performing the music of Paola PresCni in Season 4 of the Amazon Prime’s Golden Globe Award winning series Mozart in the Jungle.
