Nordentoft: "On This Planet"

1st May 2007

Since January, Aventa (the Vancouver-based new music ensemble) and artistic director William Linwood spent the early months of this year on tour performing Nordic music for audiences throughout Canada and the US. This month, Aventa returns home to present the 18 May North American premiere of Anders Nordentoft's opera On This Planet. With an English libretto by the composer, the opera features Danish performance artist Thomas Sandberg as Nordentoft's "shaman," in the composer's glimpse of the journey through life from birth to death.

"[The] protagonist," Nordentoft shares, "is an ancient mythology arising in all its power and glory....He is both an independent, present-day individual and a representative of something entirely human....He is a kind of shaman who, in a pact with the music, conjures up and lives through episodes from a life. The eternal fear of the unknown, the difficult art of love, sympathy, hatred and reconciliation are themes in his narrative..."

Nordentoft's career as a classically trained composer and rock musician shapes his conceptual melding of sound and form. "The form of the opera is defined as a labyrinth, where the director can freely compose the order of the various [movements] until the final scene which has been fixed by the composer. In this way, the most important aspect of the overall form of the music and drama is ensured....Our protagonist was sent off by St. Peter, after taking a good ‘piece of the cake'; he [then] becomes part of the mighty earth again. But fortunately, life goes on. The tale continues. The ants crawl busily and unperturbed over him."

www.aventa.ca