The Festival in collaboration with the Obrador of the Sala Beckett, (the Workshop of the Sala Beckett theatre), proposes a workshop-course on libretto writing for contemporary opera, run by the Dutch dramatist Willem Bruls.

This is a course which we wish to offer to people already involved in theatre: writers, directors, dramaturgs and also composers; creators with a certain amount of experience. In order to be able to select and invite the participants who we think would be interested and would make the most of the course we have decided that subscription will be free.

The course will be structured according to Willem Bruls’ proposal, as follows:

Day one (Saturday 13th):
Introduction
A short history of the libretto (reading)
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Tri Sestri/Three Sisters – Tchekhov/Eötvös (part 1) (case study)
Writing a Libretto (part 1): Is it possible to write a libretto? (workshop)

Day two (Sunday 14th):
Developments in contemporary music theatre and opera (reading)
break
Tri Sestri/Three Sisters – Tchekhov/Eötvös (part 2) (case study)
Writing a Libretto (part 2): Finding a subject – newspaper-articles (workshop)

Day three (Tuesday 16th):
Different ways of experiencing music theatre (reading)
break
Die schöne Müllerin – Schubert/Marthaler (casestudy)
Writing a Libretto (part 3): Finding a subject – dreams (workshop)

Day four (Wednesday 17th):
The power of language, the meaning of sound (reading)
break
Marco Polo – Claude Vivier (case study)
Writing a Libretto (part 4): Putting the texts/music together (workshop)

Day five (Thurday 18th):
Field research for a libretto: Aleppo (reading)
break
Adapting an opera – Mozarts Entführung aus dem Serail (case study)
Writing a Libretto (part 5): Presentation of the libretti (workshop)

Time: mornings, from 10h to 14h.

Biography

Willem Bruls (Maastricht, 1963) finished his studies Literature and History of Art in 1990 at the Free University in Amsterdam. As a publicist and author on music and theatre he wrote several books and articles, most notably a study on Wagner’s Ring-cycle (Godenschemering, 1999), and on Orientalism in Opera (Ontvoering, verleiding en bevrijding, 2004). As a publicist he contributes to magazines and newspapers as Opernwelt and The Wall Street Journal Europe. For several opera houses in Europe (Amsterdam, Brussels, Hamburg, Munich, Basel, Salzburg Festival) he wrote dramaturgical texts. As a dramaturg he collaborated with Albrecht Puhlmann/Herbert Wernicke (Pelléas, Brussels) and with several Dutch directors on Carmen (Amsterdam), La damnation de Faust (Amsterdam), Tosca (Riga/Latvia), and Il re pastore (Antwerp). Together with composer Yannis Kyriakides and director Paul Koek he attended a workshop on the development of music theatre in Cairo. At the moment he works with director Ramsey Nasr on an adaptation of Mozarts Entführung aus dem Serail. Simultaniously he writes an own libretto, located in the Syrian city of Aleppo.