"The Sunken City" is the name of the children's opera by Violeta Dinescu, which will be co-performed by pupils from Oldenburg. Students from the Institute of Music prepared the production. The result will soon be on show.
"It is always a miracle and a gift for me to be able to experience music and singing on stage, and it is an inspiring feeling to be able to take part in it," says Violeta Dinescu, Professor of Applied Composition at the University of Oldenburg, who has been retired for some time. This feeling is particularly strong when the piece being rehearsed is one of her own compositions: Dinescu is taking part for the first time on this day as a project group rehearses the children's opera "The Sunken City", which she composed. The special thing about it: Dinescu's opera for children is being specifically realised by the students as an opera with children, because in addition to a small professional orchestra and three singers, an Oldenburg school class will also be on stage.
Dinescu wrote her work in the style of Romanian children's songs, which touched her deeply. In the opera, the young protagonist Silja is whisked away to a magical underwater world after a seagull tells her about a beautiful city that was swept to the bottom of the sea by a storm tide a long time ago. Silja soon finds herself in the town in question, which can only surface for half an hour every seven years. The people in the town desperately want her to be rescued and place all their hopes in the girl. Silja tries to save her, but needs the help of a mysterious talisman... The one-hour play premiered in Mainz in 2008 and has since been performed at a total of three venues. Now it is to be performed for the first time in Oldenburg on Sunday, 23 April in the Exerzierhalle of the Staatstheater. Two performances are scheduled, the first at 11.00 am and the second at 4.00 pm.
Under the direction of Volker Schindel, artistic assistant at the Institute of Music with a focus on "Music, Scene, Theatre", six students are currently working together with two singers from the Bremen University of the Arts and a professional singer from Oldenburg, three instrumentalists and children from class 4a of Bloherfelde primary school on the staging of the work and its musical realisation, which will be directed by Felix Schauren from the Staatstheater. A second group of five students, led by Oldenburg musicologist apl. Prof. Dr. Kadja Grönke, has taken over the accompaniment of the play and prepared the programme booklet for the opera.
Schindel and Grönke came up with the idea for the project and preparations have been underway since last summer. In the winter semester, the participants began the concrete artistic planning for the realisation of the children's opera, and rehearsals finally began in February, initially on the stage of the university auditorium. The students from Schindel's group worked with the children to develop the choreography, put together the stage set and took care of the costumes.
Working with the pupils has broadened their horizons, reports education student Anne Kötz: "The children are very receptive to opera, which is a new genre for them, and are less prejudiced about this form of music than many adults." Her fellow student Saskia Altenschmidt, who is studying music and philosophy to become a teacher, has a similar experience: "The practical experience in dealing with schoolchildren that I have gained through the project will also help me in my academic appointment," she is convinced.
The second group of students put a lot of energy and time into creating the programme booklet for the children's opera. Not an easy task, as Grönke reports: "The booklet has to be formulated in such a way that the children in particular, as our most important target group, are neither over- nor under-challenged by the reading. After all, they want to be taken seriously," she says. The booklet will include short portraits of the artists involved as well as a biography of Violeta Dinescu, says Andris Möring, a student teacher involved in the project. "We also present the work and talk about the background to its creation." Grönke's seminar group also developed a deeper understanding of the score, because: "Violeta Dinescu not only gives us lots of ideas to let our imagination run wild, but also allows us to change her score and realise it as we read it," says Grönke happily.
The biggest challenge of the project was to bring together so many people from different age groups and with different backgrounds and previous knowledge. Everyone involved agrees that this has been a success so far. Merle Hinrichsen, a student of special education and music, also emphasises this: "The division of work between adults and children has worked very well. Working together on the opera is a great experience for me!"
The audience is soon whisked away to "The Sunken City" and taken on a fantasy journey to another world. The story of the young heroine Silja, who tries to save the inhabitants of the sunken city, is intended to encourage the children to shape their own future in a self-determined way. After all, as Violeta Dinescu puts it, "art serves as a dress rehearsal for life."
The project is realised with the support of klangpol - Netzwerk Neue Musik Nordwest as well as the Universitätsgesellschaft Oldenburg e.V. and the Dialogkonzerte at the University of Oldenburg.
