Close my eyes

A co-production by Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre, art-laboratory of the festival TERRITORIA and company SIBUR.

Chamber vocal works by composers of XIX and XX centuries that go in the performance are microstories from private lives of people from different epochs and countries. These stories are organized in a special dramaturgical order and become remarks in a multifigured conversation.

Ilya Kukharenko, the curator of the laboratory and the playwriter of the performance «Close my eyes»:
— The name of the performance, «Close my eyes», is the first line from the song by Alban Berg «Schließe mir die Augen beide» which sounds in our performance together with the songs by Schubert, Mahler, Poulenc, Duparc and others. But it is also a call to trust each other, to travel to an unknown space with eyes closed.

Anna Abalikhina, the director and the choreographer of the performance «Close my eyes»:
— Musically the performance is a traditional Liederabend — a songs sequence, beaded on a concrete dramaturgical thread. Meanwhile it is a performance with no difference between performers with «moving» experience and academic singers. There are no preconceptions against opera singers who are supposed not to be able to obtain plastic freedom on stage because singing enchains them and despoils of mobility.

The principal soloists of the Perm opera company will take part in the performance: Natalia Buklaga, Natalia Kirillova, Konstantin Suchkov, Sergei Godin and also the dancers Valeria Veretennikova, Aleksei Karakulov, Vladimir Kiryanov, Elena Konina, Maria Polscha and Laura Khasanshina. The piano part will be performed by a concertmaster of the musicAeterna orchestra and the orchestra of the Perm opera and ballet theatre Kristina Basyul.

Sound designer is a composer, a musician and a research scientist of the Electroacoustic music centre of the Moscow conservatory Aleksei Nadzharov.

Perm laboratory is a part of a huge educational project of the International festival-school of the modern art «Territory» and the company Sibur — «Art-laboratory». The premiere of the performance «Close my eyes» will close the third season of this artistic program that already created performances included in the repertoires of Tobolsk and Voronezh theatres.