Opera
God's Videotheek
God’s Videotheque opera for Opera Spanga (NL) | 2007
Original libretto Irma Achten, composer Monique Krüs.
In this tragicomical opera the relationship between god, man and animal(pigs) is being reviewed.
Does man enjoy his position as center of the universe? And is it justified?
Joseph Kiss, manager of God’s Videotheque, pays God a visit and brings organic wine and perfume.
On a large screen they watch the three main characters on their way to a convention about xenotransplanstation.
Leo Fulca, a scientist, wants to know more about the latest developments in that area. His wife Hanna, philosopher, is totally against it.
Sofie Van Dam, shy, but when it comes down to it a very fanatic catholic pharmacist, cannot bear the idea that animals in this line of thinking are equal to man.
Already at the end of the ouverture all 3 are killed.
They awake in a void between life and death in God’s Videothque, where they are welcomed by the manager, Joseph Kiss.
Here piles of tapes with videos of everybody’s life are being stored.
Kiss shows each of his 3 guests scenes that they’d rather not see.
How do they deal with animals, or the ones closest to them?
After her death Sophie Van Dam is confronted with how she dealt with the one closest to her.
The Grief of Gravity
The story:
Irma Achten wrote the philosophical as well as romantic text about Gravity and Awareness, two symbolic figures who fall in love with eachother.
They bare many children: the grass, the trees, rocks, hummingbirds and of course: man.
He calls himself: Matter, with ‘a big head and spectacled eyes’ and denies everything that can not be measured.
His mother Awareness leaves her husband Gravity and night after night she crawls into his dreams
to tell him there’s more to life than mere facts.
She cannot return to Gravity until Matter realizes this.