Oslo Sinfonietta @ Oslo International Church Music Festival
03/14/2019
NORWAY PREMIERE
CHURCH OPERA: UPON THIS HANDFUL OF EARTH
GISLE KVERNDOKK, COMPOSER AND LIBRETTIST
AKSEL-OTTO BULL, LIBRETTIST AND DIRECTOR
GJERMUND ANDRESEN, SCENOGRAPHER
OSLO CATHEDRAL BOYS' CHOIR, DAVID MAIWALD (CONDUCTOR)
TREFOLDIGHET GIRLS' CHOIR, EDLE STRAY-PEDERSEN (CONDUCTOR)
OSLO CATHEDRAL CHOIR
OSLO SINFONIETTA
VIVIANNE SYDNES, CONDUCTOR
Trefoldighets Church
20 March, at 20.00
An opera about climate change and natural disasters
Experience a spectacular Norway premiere! The church opera Upon This Handful of Earth deals with one of today's absolute greatest challenges: climate change and natural disasters. The opera tells stories of human lives that have been impacted by environmental disasters. Nearly 100 musicians contribute during the Norwegian premiere and fill the church with sound and visual impressions in a full-scale opera production.
The 2019 Church music festival's major initiative, Upon This Handful of Earth, is composed by Gisle Kverndokk. The libretto is written by Aksel-Otto Bull and Kverndokk, inspired by texts by the Catholic priest, philosopher and naturalist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The work also makes use of a 3500-year-old Veda text in Sanskrit, texts from American indigenous peoples and environment-related newspaper articles concerning the Chernobyl accident, Shell's oil disaster in Nigeria and the fracking industry. The opera is written for boys' and girls' choir, mixed choir, chamber orchestra and six vocal soloists, with a central role performed by the boy soprano Philip Weiss-Hagen, all under the direction of Vivianne Sydnes.
