MEDIATHEK

The work is about war and the hatred of war. It speaks also about memory and traces the delicate ways in which people connect with one another. Both singers/actors and players are persent on stage. Each has his or her independent line/role, composed of a few sounds/words and long silences. Each role functions as a sort of inner monologue. Four figures move on stage while a war rages in the background: The ”vagabond” is coming from the war; the traveling singer sings anti war songs alternating with sweet lullabies to an invisible audience; the ”woman in the middle” moves around a table as she folds clothes, preparing a meal and humming to herself, waiting. The vagabond passes her way and a very delicate almost nonverbal bond begins to grow between them during three mostly silent encounters. The “Woman on the Side” is sitting by a table, singing to herself—as if in a dream— fragments from Monteverdi’s “Lamento dela Ninfa” interwoven with passages describing a woman moving about her empty rooms. In the background a voice of a man is heard reading a war diary. Parts of Zohar Eitan’s poem “Back Then” appear throughout the whole work. The opera begins with the poem’s opening words: “Back then, the people could watch the sunrise without narrowing their eyes, without blinking and with no sun glasses….”