Abendsonne, a new chamber opera with music by Tomasz Skweres and libretto by Kristine Tornquist, will premiere on November 10 at Wien Modern festival. Antanina Kalechyts will be conducting sirene Operntheater and ensemble PHACE. Six performances follow until November 17.
Set in a retirement home, the tragicomedy centres on themes of getting older and the fear of dying – reflected in the name Abendsonne which is German for Evening Sun. But it does so with a serene humour allowing the characters and the audience to accept the inevitable.
Skweres included allusions to famous operas, explaining: “All these glimpses into musical history, this constant going back in time, are linked to the main theme of the opera – age and the attempt to accept the uncompromising, unstoppable progression of time. In a musical sense, too, two worlds collide in this composition – the realistic, uncompromising and the irrational.”
See the trailer for a first impression.
Tomasz Skweres is a Polish composer and cellist. His orchestral compositions have been performed by renown orchestras and ensembles like Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, Munich Chamber Orchestra, ensemble öenm, New Music Orchestra Poland, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Regensburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Cappella Gedanensis, Hastings Philharmonics, and Global Symphony Orchestra in Hong-Kong. His works are regularly feature at festivals, including Wien Modern, Warsaw Autumn, Musica Polonica Nova, ISCM World New Music Days in 2016 and 2025, and Festival Musica in Strasbourg in France.
