Twitter-Opera NOSTRA CULPA Heats Up Tonight

New Music festival Arena presents Twitter-Opera Nostra Culpa, tonight 18 October at 7pm.

In June, 2012, there was a heated discussion on Twitter: Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the President of Estonia, and American economist Paul Krugman exchanged words on the status quo of Estonia's economic situation. Just now, the event has been made into a 'twitter-opera' written by Eugene Birman who was born in Daugavpils, Latvia, and has studied composition and economy in the USA and Estonia. The mezzo soprano voice of Iris Oja (Estonia) travels across the widest of the horizons, impersonating both the debaters. Are we dumb or obscurant? Nostra culpa...

Along with a twitter opera, we are happy to enjoy Grave by Witold Lutos?awski (1913-1994) - the metamorphoses of the motif from the Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande; the chamber music opus Monolythe by Belgian composer and music theorist Jean-Marie Rens (1955); the multi-coloured music under the title Jubilees dedicated to Pierre Boulez and written by Magnus Lindberg (1958), so keen in tembral colours; and Piedras by the student of Thomas Adès, Francisco Coll (1985), a Spanish composer who resides in London: the first performance of the piece made a hit in England.

Iris Oja, mezzo-soprano

Guna ?bolti?a, cello

Conductor Normunds Šn?

Sinfonietta R?ga

Programme:

Eugene Birman Nostra culpa

Magnus Lindberg Jubilees

Witold Lutoslawski Grave

Jean-Marie Rens Monolythe

Francisco Coll Piedras