Greek National Opera To Present World Premiere Of JUS SOLI, March 13

The Greek National Opera will present the world premiere of Jus soli, a 60-minute oratorio by Turkish-American composer Kamran Ince and Turkish librettist İzzeddin Çalışlar on Sunday, March 13 at 6:30 p.m. in Stavros Niarchos Hall at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens. Commissioned as part of the GNO's tribute to the 2021 bicentennial of the Greek Revolution, Jus soli-named after the Latin term for the rule that citizenship is determined by the place of one's birth-differs from previous productions that celebrated the Greek victory by seeking to reflect upon the revolution from the perspective of modern-day descendants of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The oratorio will be performed by the orchestra and soloists of the GNO and a chorus ensemble led by Greek conductor Miltos Logiadis and feature lighting and video projections by Istanbul-based company Nohlab.

The Greek War of Independence, a rebellion of Greeks within the Ottoman Empire, took place from March 1821 to July 1832 and-aided by Western forces-resulted in the establishment of an independent kingdom of Greece. The success of the revolution gave hope to many other nations under Ottoman rule to stage their own rebellions. Some of the questions the oratorio seeks to answer include: might there be some common ground between the official narratives adopted by each side and the experiences of their leaders and subjects, as seen through the lens of the here and now?; What lyrics, what musical motifs, what images have the power to capture the kaleidoscopically diverse array of emotions felt by these peoples in the face of how they experienced, first, the collapse and loss of their customary way of life, and second, being violently uprooted and displaced in the bloody exchange of Greek and Turkish populations that followed?

Artistic Director of the GNO, Giorgos Koumendakis, said the impetus behind commissioning a work from a Turkish creative team was to seek to bring the perspective of the vanquished to the fore and into the light. He said the resulting work uses the sea as a central, powerful metaphor: "It is a work that attempts to distil the sea that divides and unites two peoples into a symbol of peace and understanding."

Mr. Ince, who is a Professor of Composition at the University of Memphis in the United States and at the MIAM Center for Advanced Research in Music at the Istanbul Technical University in Turkey, was born in Montana but grew up in Ankara. He said including a work from an opposing point of view in its bicentennial programming was "a very creative, bold and courageous proposition by the Greek National Opera."

Mr. Ince said his music has always reflected the many cultural influences in his life and he has brought this blend of styles to the new oratorio. The orchestra will include two traditional instruments, the kemence, a stringed bowed instrument of Eastern Mediterranean origin, and the baglama, a stringed instrument of Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Middle-East, and Balkan origin.

"I grew up with Turkey's duality, triality, and quadality. Turks may be thought of as coming from central Asia, but the Anatolian Turks, by the 21st century, had mixed so much with the people and cultures of the lands they inherited that it is really difficult to say where we are from with certainty. I developed an affinity for Byzantium, Greek, Armenian, and Jewish culture in addition to, of course, the Ottoman and the Turkish cultures. Music, architecture, and the spiritual sides of the religions of the land are of great importance to my creative world. Jus soli gave me a chance to live and express this one more time, perhaps this time in a more confrontational, controversial setting, feeling the drama and the trauma.

"The music can be at times passionate, searching, spiritual, strong, weak, traumatized, mad, with love, with hate, defeated, or victorious with much melancholy. One of my greatest loves in art is contrasts. In my music, I create these contrasts with vertical or horizontal juxtapositions of the cultural ingredients at my disposal. These can even be actual quotes at times and Jus soli has a few. Western and American ingredients must be added to the list, after all, it is a part of who I am with my Turkish and American parents."

Mr. Ince has previously composed works about historical conflicts, including his Symphony No. 2 "Fall of Constantinople" and Symphony No. 3 "Siege of Vienna," which are among his five recordings for Naxos. (He has also composed a symphony for a football team, his Symphony No. 5 "Galatasaray" was composed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Turkish club.)

Librettist, Turkish writer İzzeddin Çalışlar, who has written several books about conflicts in Asia Minor, was sailing between two Greek Islands when he received a phone call from Mr. Ince about the project. He said the title, Jus soli, came to him almost immediately, guiding the tone of the libretto.

"As a member of a family who was exiled from central Anatolia (Niconia) to Ioannina in the 1430s, after living there for nearly five centuries and living in Istanbul for the last hundred years, I can feel empathy with the victims of both Greek and Turkish communities."

"I feel myself Ioanninan as much as I am from Istanbul. Can I be the right person to represent the alternative view in this oratorio? When I asked this question to myself, I said, "definitely yes." I thought the opposing view on this issue should not be nationalistic, that blindly follows the official Turkish one. Kamran and I were in total agreement on this. Two Turks, one from Memphis / Istanbul and the other from Ioannina / Istanbul, had to bring a third point of view to Athens: beyond generalizations, judgments, and accepted stereotypes-opposite of nationalist Jacobins of both sides-beyond the views of the good official and the bad official."

Jus soli is the latest in several international premieres to be presented to Greek audiences since the GNO-the only opera house in Greece-relocated to the Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center (SNFCC) in 2017. In 2019 a major grant of €20 million was announced by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to support the implementation of a four-year programming and development plan that will enhance the artistic outreach of the GNO and increase the promotion of its work overseas by funding co-productions, collaborations with international lyric theaters, invitations of renowned artists, GNO productions touring in Greece and abroad, and the Greek Revolution anniversary program. The company's goal is to be one of Europe's most innovative opera houses with a unique artistic identity that engages global talent and inspires large and diverse audiences.

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