The 66th International Festival of Contemporary Music Out of Stage takes place from 14-25 September 2022.
In a press release from the Biennale, the title Out of Stage, is described as "a title that refers to works conceived for places and situations other than those offered by traditional stages, sketches out a wide perspective of contemporary music theatre and the role of new technologies, of multimedia, that includes the programming of virtual and augmented reality applied to sound, in new forms and genres codified by the composers involved in the festival."
Among the works of music theatre commissioned by the Biennale Musica 2022, is the new project by Simon Steen-Andersen: The Return. Steen-Andersen's piece is described as particularly representative of the festival: "The dramaturgy of the piece, based on Claudio Monteverdi’s Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria, uses quotations and re-elaborations of the original score to tie into a reconnaissance of the sites on which the Teatro di San Cassiano and the Teatro dei Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the first public theatres in Venice, once stood, and to an evocation of the opera’s first performance."
The golf balls in the image above may bring about associations to previous works by Simon Steen-Andersen, and the composer does add (a.k.a Run Time Error @ Venice) to the title of The Return. His Loop of the Nibelung (a.k.a Run Time Error @ Bayreuth) was recorded at Festspielhaus Bayreuth in 2020, and can be experienced here >>Various other versions of Run Time Error can be found here >>
Besides from the premiere of Simon Steen-Andersen's The Return, the festival presents new works of experimental music theatre commissioned from Helena Tulve, Michel van der Aa, Paolo Buonvino and Annelies Van Parys, in addition to the Italian premieres of new projects by Alexander Schubert, Rino Murakami and Ondřej Adámek. The festival programme also includes several classics of “instrumental theatre” by Mauricio Kagel, Georges Aperghis and works by composers recognized in this field such as Carola Bauckholt and François Sarhan.
Read the full press release from La Biennale di Vennezia here >>