SEM Ensemble to Present Petr Kotik's MASTER-PIECES

By: Nov. 21, 2014
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The S.E.M. Ensemble returns to Paula Cooper Gallery for the American premiere of American/Czech composer Petr Kotik's Master-Pieces (2014). The staged, 60-minute chamber opera features a libretto by Kotik, based on writings by Gertrude Stein and adapted to the stage by director Michael Rau. Commissioned by the National Moravian-Silesian Theatre in collaboration with New Opera Days Ostrava (NODO), Czech Republic, Master-Pieces received its world premiere at NODO last June. The opera marks Kotik's return to Stein's rhythmic, poetic prose, after Many Many Women and There is Singularly Nothing, both composed in the 70's.

A meditation on the nature of art and the act of creation,the opera draws from two works by Gertrude Stein - her 1936 lecture, What Are Masterpieces and Why Are So Few of Them and excerpts from The Wars I Have Seen, her diary from the last three years of WWII, published in 1945. For Stein, "the masterpiece has nothing to do with human nature or with identity, it has to do with the human mind and entity, that is with a thing in itself and not in relation." Kotik's opera develops this seeming simple idea by asking: Is what one is doing about the self (identity) or the work (entity)?

"I wanted to go beyond the spectacle of a musical performance to investigate a meaningful subject matter within a theatrical form," Kotik notes. "The theatrical energy comes from the very questions raised by Stein, as she continuously veers off her subject to contemplate and think about issues of creative process and the relationship between the self and the world." The opera is a hybrid between theater and music; and the words - sometimes sung and sometimes spoken - strive to retain the poetry of Stein's language while opening various layers of meanings.

The premiere will take place at Paula Cooper Gallery, located at 534 West 21st Street, NY, on Wednesday, December 17, 2014, 7:30pm. Tickets: Advance sale $15/10; at the door $20/15. www.semensemble.org/tickets. More info: (718) 488-7659 or info@semensemble.org



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