MEDIATHEK

A Laugh to Cry is a contemporary opera about human dignity.

A Laugh to Cry explores some primary concerns, which have always haunted human beings, and reveals them from the perspective of our contemporary globalized world. The opera is shaped like a meditation on the hegemonic power of the destruction of memory, the devastation of the Earth and even the collapse of humanity. It evolves in the fringes between dream and reality, between the visible and invisible, being divided in several acts where five characters, two sopranos, one bass and two narrators (a female and a male voice), live and dwell constantly between these two parallels. The opera also involves seven acoustic instruments: flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, viola, cello, as well as live electronics and extended video staging & scenography and real-time processed images.

A Laugh to Cry is a metaphysical theatre embodying eternal archetypes.

A Laugh to Cry pursues Miguel Azguime's goal, as poet and composer, to grasp an ideal balance between language and music, to merge the language's semantic and metaphorical components with its sonic values, in order to achieve his concept of “speech as music and music as speech". A Laugh to Cry extends Miguel Azguime's research on voice analysis, re-synthesis and processing, aiming at creating a dynamic continuum between timbre, harmony, rhythm and voice spectra.

Paula Azguime focuses for the video staging & scenography of A Laugh to Cry upon her quest on proliferate emotions out of the relations created between music, text and acting, binding her artistic expression to the metaphysical realm of each project.