REVIEWS
The music by the US composer Erling Wold, with whom the director already worked on the operas "Rattensturm" (2018) and "Uksus" (2012), both of which were projects of the Klagenfurt ensemble, is mostly tonal, polystylistic, catchy, and atmospheric. Rousing jazz and pop-oriented rhythms can be found as well as fine lyrical passages. It is performed in a very concentrated, precise and ambitious manner by the six-member instrumental ensemble of the Camerata Sinfonica Austria under its founder and director Davorin Mori.[Die Musik des US - Komponisten Erling Wold, mit dem der Regisseur schon bei den Opern "Rattensturm" (2018) )und „Uksus“ (2012) zusammengearbeitete, beides waren Projekte des klagenfurter ensemble, ist meist tonal, polystilistisch, eingängig, stimmungsvoll untermalend. Mitreißende, am Jazz und Pop orientierte Rhythmen sind ebenso zu finden wie feine lyrische Passagen. Sie wird vom sechsköpfigen instrumentalensemble der Camerata Sinfonica Austria unter dessen Gründer und Leiter Davorin Mori sehr konzentriert, präzise und ambitioniert umgesetzt.] - Opera Online
Wold's music has an oscillating stylistic diversity. Over the piece, the text is treated recitatively, whereby the harmonic and melodic guidance are quite tonally oriented, but yet permeated by an expressive harshness. In between, rhythms of pop music and jazz flash: Wold proves to be a compositional glass bead player. [Wolds Musik schließlich setzt auf oszillierende stilistische Vielfalt. Über weite Strecken wird der Text eher rezitativisch behandelt, wobei Harmonik und Melodieführung durchaus tonal orientiert, aber doch von expressiver Herbheit durchzogen sind. Zwischendurch blitzen Rhythmen der Popmusik und des Jazz auf: Wold erweist sich als kompositorischer Glasperlenspieler.] - Voralberg online
SYNOPSIS
On the 16th of October 2017, the Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered by a car bomb, after bringing to light corruption at the highest levels of the Maltese government and beyond. Through her investigations and her blog, which at one point was the most-read source of news in Malta, she became a nexus of information, receiving hundreds of thousands of emails holding tips and clues. But it is an unfortunate fact that one cannot reveal the injustices wrought by powerful people without paying a price.
At the beginning, we meet Daphne in her garden, her refuge. At the end, we find ourselves back in her garden, now a place where all those who were murdered because of their writings sit between the plants. And between the beginning and the end we see the murder unfold in fits and starts. We see one of the murderers, George Degiorgio, sitting in his boat and waiting for his brother's call, that call that signals to him: now she is in the car, it s the time to send the text that detonates the bomb.
Daphne was a living grief box, a mouthpiece for the people. In the opera, they are the choir that has given Daphne her information, a cacophony of individual voices, the ringing of different telephones, the whispering, the indignation. The choir is the organic background against which the plot unfolds, and in its origin from the depth of the European theatrical language corresponds to the archaic of this vendetta-like murder. The choir is alternately sea, garden, wall, but also the series of politicians, lawyers, businessmen, people with money waiting for to be washed clean.
