MUSIC

Opera Vista, winner of the 2010 Houston Press MasterMind Award, announces that its upcoming 2010 Opera Vista Festival and the third annual Vista Competition will take place March 20-27, at the Czech Center Museum Houston and the Live Oak Friends Meetinghouse.

In October, seven semi-finalists from three countries were selected for the 2010 Vista Competition, ranging from an adaptation of a Japanese folk tale to a horror opera. Excerpts from each work will be performed on March 24th & 26th at the Czech Center, 4920 San Jacinto at Wichita, beginning at 7:30pm. A panel of judges, including world-renowned composer Daron Hagen and acclaimed conductor Leslie Dunner, will critique each excerpt, and the audience will vote to select which operas will advance.

In the final round, the winning excerpts will be performed again with a longer critique from the judges, and the audience will get to directly question the composers. The audience then votes to determine the winner of the competition, which will be announced the next night at the festival’s closing performance. The winner receives $1,500 and a full production of their opera at the next festival.

This year’s festival will also include the world premiere of the winning opera from the 2009 Vista Competition, Anorexia Sacra by Line Tjørnhøj (pictured). Line couples the plight of a young woman suffering from anorexia with the writings of the 13th century nun Claire of Assisi. Anorexia Sacra will be performed at 7:30pm on March 20th and 27th at the Friends Meetinghouse, 1318 West 26th Street.

Additionally, there will be an evening of chamber music composed by jury member Daron Hagen at 7:30pm on March 25th at the Czech Center. Finally, there will be a brunch for all composers attending the festival as well as all Houston-area composers on Saturday, March 27.

The following operas, in alphabetical order, will be in the third annual Vista Competition:

* And Then I Remember, Music by Lembit Beecher, Ann Arbor, MI
* Bamboo Cutter and the Moon, Music by Joseph Eidson, Lawrence, KS
* Happy Garden of Life, Music by Katarzyna Brochocka, Lidzbark Warmi?ski, Poland
* Joc de Mans, Music by Alberto Garcia Demestres, Santa Maria de Palautordera, Spain
* The Monkey’s Paw, Music by Jonathan Kupper, La Mirada, CA
* Requiem for the Living, Music by Ronnie Reshef, New York, NY
* The Yellow Wallpaper, Music by Catherine Reid, Glens Falls, NY

Here is the schedule at a glance:
Saturday, March 20 7:30p Anorexia Sacra Friends Meetinghouse
Wednesday, March 24 7:30p Competition Semifinals Czech Center
Thursday, March 25 7:30p Chamber Concert: Music of Daron Hagen Czech Center
Friday, March 26 7:30p Competition Finals Czech Center
Saturday, March 27 11:00a Composers’ Brunch TBA
Saturday, March 27 7:30p Anorexia Sacra & Announcement of Winner Friends Meetinghouse

Line Tjørnhøj is a composer, sound artist and performer, as well as a member of the Danish Composers Society. Since 1995 she has been initiating, composing for and participating in theatre, dance, musical, performance, radio and television. Line Tjørnhøj lets voices and sounds cross borders of style, tradition, expression and aesthetics. She has worked with a broad variety of singers from jazz, ethno, opera, Bulgarian women’s chorus, throat singers and Roy Hart trained singers as well as musicians, choreographers and visual artists from the contemporary experimental performance scene. In her stage works she experiments with integrating live electronic processing and concrete stage props sounds to let the music itself do a part of “staging” the work. This is a way to keep the focus on acoustics and to let the music form the axis of the dramatic staging creating a conscious comment on our contemporary, extremely visually oriented society.

Line on Anorexia Sacra:

”… Trusting in no one and agreeing with no one insofar as he might want to dissuade you from pursuing your founding purpose or might place a stumbling block in your way, preventing you, in that perfection with which the Spirit of the Lord has called you, from fulfilling your vows to the Most High. (Saint Clare of Assisi to Agnes of Prague 1235 – translation Joan Mueller)

Clare of Assisi – founder of the most extreme ascetic medieval order “Poor Clare’s” – died in 1253 from anorexia. At the time of her death she was highly respected and admired. She is the most well known of a group of medieval female ascetics who – according to contemporary psychiatric understanding – practiced behavior commonly associated with eating disorders. They were strongly connected to the mysticism of the time as a religious movement and they saw strict asceticism as the only true way to unify with Jesus Christ as his heavenly brides. Our contemporary western culture – in a cult like manner – pays tribute to the perfect appearance of the body, personified by models on catwalks and becoming evident through Hollywood presenting infantile “thin”-looking ”superstars”. In the context of western ”abundance” anorectics fear to drown in their own fat and they present their ”holy icons” as ”thinspiration” on the proana websites (pro = professional – ana = anorexia). Back then and now ”control” and ”willpower” are the keywords for the anorectics and back then and now they exchange proana tips – existential and spiritual thoughts and written poetry. Leaving family, the psychiatric system and friends behind in a complete powerless voyeuristic position, anorectics take a tour de force – often for years – alone with their pain and suffering – and quite frequently tragically ending in death.

In her work, Line Tjørnhøj strives to confront this tangible human caused “pain” and transforms that energy into a reconciling and creative musical expression. Human suffering can take so many forms and the only “instrument” that is truly capable of displaying this wide spectrum of emotions, is the human voice – doing both, staging the drama, forming the words and simultaneously bringing comfort and healing. This is possible when singers dare to extend their vocal expression beyond pure singing and integrate basic authentic sounds of their voices into the expression: sounds that normally express extreme conditions such as pain, great joy, satisfaction and devotion. This is how the drama – Anorexia Sacra – comes to life on stage.

The libretto of Anorexia Sacra consists of extracts from Clare of Assisi’s letters and other medieval writings that were blended with Line Tjørnhøj’s lyrics. She got her inspiration from the writings on the proana websites and attempted to build a poetic bridge, and a textual collage, respectively, spanning more than 800 years of time. The libretto is especially pointing out the powerless situation parents and treatment initiatives found themselves in when confronting the enormous power and will of self-starvation. It displays the aspects of thoughts and feelings expressed through compulsive self-destructive behavior. But mostly it is the story of a father who watches his beloved daughter starving herself to death.