Season opening with "Denis & Katya"
In a moving premiere, the Kammeroper delighted the audience on 27 September with the Austrian premiere of Denis & Katya, composed by Philip Venables and directed by Marcos Darbyshire. The musical rehearsal of the opera was in the hands of Anna Sushon. The opera tells the true story of Denis and Katya, two teenagers from the Russian town of Strugi Krasnyie who find their tragic destiny in the turmoil of social media and an escalating situation.
Mezzo-soprano Hasti Molavian and baritone Timothy Connor give the story of the two young lovers from different perspectives. The opera is based on eyewitness accounts, including a journalist, a best friend of Denis, a neighbour, a teacher, a teenager and a doctor who reconstruct the tragic events.
What is particularly remarkable about this production is the close cooperation between the CAMPUS programme and the Akademie Klangforum Wien PPCM. As part of the Master's programme "Performance Practice in Contemporary Music" (PPCM) at the Kunstuniversität Graz, selected students, including Mina Zakić, Federico Pellaschiar and Bruno Williams dos Santos, had the opportunity to participate in the production and thus gain important experience.
Since 2009, Klangforum Wien has held a collective professorship at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and is dedicated to passing on forms of expression and playing techniques to a new generation of musicians. The cooperation with the CAMPUS programme of the MusikTheater an der Wien offers students the opportunity to participate directly in music theatre productions and to learn from the members of the ensemble. Master classes with the respective composers also enable the musicians to intensively engage with the works. The most recent production in the framework of this collaboration was Der goldene Drache last February, and more are planned.