With Justice, the Grand Théâtre de Genève will stage Hèctor Parras’ latest musical theatre in January 2024.
With the world premiere of Justice, the famous Swiss theatre director Milo Rau is making his second foray into the world of opera after La clemenza di Tito at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, this time with a world premiere based on Rau’s style of documentary theatre. Together with the Catalan composer Hèctor Parra and the Congolese writer Fiston Mwanza Mujila, a new work of music theatre is being created that takes up themes such as neo-colonialism, industrial striving for power and the exploitation of the so-called global South, thus appearing as a discourse on the world of today that is both documentary and poetic.
Hèctor Parra, one of the most versatile contemporary composers, whose works have been performed at renowned festivals such as the Lucerne Festival, the Warsaw Autumn Festival and the Donaueschingen Music Festival, has been recruited for this project. In particular, his music theatre works Les Bienveillantes (Antwerp 2019), Wilde (Schwetzingen 2015) and Das geopferte Leben (Munich Biennale 2013) were highly praised by critics.
highly praised by critics.
Rau and Mujila developed the libretto in close collaboration: In the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2019, a tanker lorry filled with acid crashes into a bus, causing more than 20 deaths and an environmental disaster. A Swiss multinational company in the DR Congo is involved in this incident. Rau, Mujila and Parra create a polyphonic and elegiac work about the fate of a village and, beyond that a reflection on the different interests in this African country.
Political and economic forces as well as NGOs meet the local population, the myths and legends of an old country meet the “developed” world. The question of justice is raised again and again. Issues that come together at an international level, especially in the city of Geneva, and are negotiated on a daily basis.
Parra’s music is located on the border between pleasure and pain. It gets under your skin, whereby a sophisticated compositional language and a stringent structure lend it an appealing character and expressive power. For this work, Parra also uses elements of traditional music from the Congo with the participation of the Congolese jazz guitarist Kojak Kossakamvwe.
Premiere: 22 January 2024, 8:00 pm
Further performances: 26.01.2024, 24.01.2024, 28.01.2024
A co-production and co-commission with the Festival Tangente St. Pölten