In the next new collaboration of Von Krahl Theatre and Nargen Opera the tender and colourful music of Tõnu Kõrvits entangles with the paintings of a young artist - Merike Estna.
Maarja Kangro, the author of the text, has used Marie Heiberg's works in the librettos. The new domestic opera is revived by conductor Tõnu Kaljuste and director Peeter Jalakas.
Singers are Kädi Plaats and Helen Lokuta, and the Nargen Opera Choir, music maker is Tallinn Chamber Orchestra.
Video design by Ville Hyvonen, costumes by Reet Aus.
Only 4 performances!
My Swans, My Thoughts
Tõnu Kõrvits / libretto, based on Marie Heiberg's works, by Maarja Kangro
"My swans..." is not a tragic story of a mad poet. People tend to see Marie Heiberg who passed her last twenty years at mental hospital and roamed around insanely already earlier, as a tragic figure with a gloomy destiny. Our opera, however, tries to show the poet in a different light - maybe something that Heiberg herself would have liked more. This is a story of passion for light and truth, unstable but forceful wish to seize the secrets, and still reach something. It is also a story of leaving and separation, where we proceed from the conventional reality to the new, hallucinatory one. The Poetess, who at first offers the diary-like moods of Heiberg, creates the imaginary picture with what she finally identifies herself, and leaves the "sensible" world. But the departure should not be merely a transfer to the frightening shadow-like world, where the blank eyes in the schizophrenic's skinny face stare to emptiness. In our story Marie could have reached some place that she hoped to visit in her often naive and pretentious visions. Mad princess sees the bright light - and who says that these moments cannot be beautiful?