Ivo Van Hove Presents U.S. Premiere of DIARY OF ONE WHO DISAPPEARED At BAM

The Diary of One Who Disappeared marks the Flemish opera company Muziektheater Transparant's return to Leo Jan ek's autobiographical love story in a new production by lauded director Ivo van Hove.

In 1917, Czech composer Leo Jan ek became entranced with a married woman 40 years his junior. Despite her ambivalence toward him, she was the muse for lead characters in three of his operas and the inspiration for other musical works including the Glagolitic Mass, Sinfonietta, and his String Quartet No. 2 (also titled Intimate Letters), in addition to Diary of One Who Disappeared a haunting 22-part song cycle about a village boy named Jan ek who falls in love with Zefka, a Romany girl.

Over the years Jan ek penned more than 700 love letters to St sslov , and in the year before his death he wrote her every day.

Van Hove's adaptation sets the main character a successful photographer in a present-day city and supplements the cycle with extracts from Jan ek's love letters to Kamila, creating an intimate self-portrait. In the original version, Zefka is a minor character and her words are heard only through Jan ek's recollections, almost a distant, phantom voice. However in this production, dramaturg Krystian Lada and composer Annelies Van Parys weave into Jan ek's score five poems by Romani women from around the time of the work's composition, giving Zefka a stronger voice and restoring her agency in her own love story.

Featuring bravura performances by tenor Andrew Dickinson and mezzo-soprano Marie Hamard with additional music by composer Annelies Van Parys, van Hove's contemporary reimagining of Jan ek's singular work paints a deeply affecting portrait of identity, infatuation, and alienation