In January 2023, the second insight into our opera was shared in public - a 30min performance in which Hugo Canoilas’ Phantasmagoria was presented on a mechanised roller, accompanied with music recorded in Dublin, featuring soprano Liz Hilliard and electronics.
What could an opera look like in our time? How do sounds, stories and spaces interact with each other and how do they shape our perception? In the opera studio of the Bregenz Festival and the Kunsthaus Bregenz, the audience can follow the creation of a new opera over several years - a process that otherwise usually takes place behind closed doors.
Three different artists are currently involved in this creative exchange: the composer and violinist Éna Brennan, the director and librettist Sir David Pountney and the visual artist Hugo Canoilas. In the past few months, she has already been able to get to know the audience: With her music and pieces selected by her, Éna Brennan, together with musicians from the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra, made the audience float in the last KUB concert. At the beginning of the year, Insight 1 already mentioned a mysterious octopus as a possible center of the new project. This diverse, sensitive and fascinating creature has occupied the work of the artist Hugo Canoilas, who comes from Lisbon and lives in Vienna and New York. For the exhibition Phantasmagoria , which took place in the summer of 2022 at the CAV - Centro de Arte Visuais in Coimbra, Portugal, he designed a huge painting that spanned all the rooms of the building and depicted elements of an octopus. This work of art could also play an important role in the planned premiere at the Bregenz Festival in 2024.
In the second insight event, the audience at the Bregenz Festival Hall will experience this painting in a special way. In the conversation, Hugo Canoilas will provide insights into his working methods and present his ideas for the opera project in progress.
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Photography © Bregenzer Festspiele / Anja Köhler