MEDIATHEK

Maniozis – Alexander Belousov’s chamber opera is a musical and philosophical reflection based on an updating of Spinoza’s ideas about the necessary and voluntary union of people on the basis of reason and common good. The work’s title imperfectly combines the words “mania” and “gnosis” – “mania” and “knowledge.”
 “It is before all things useful to men to associate their ways of life, to bind themselves together with such bonds as they think most fitted to gather them all into unity, and generally to do whatsoever serves to strengthen friendship.” (Spinoza.The Ethics. Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata, 1677).
 Maniozis refers back to the genre of dramma per musica, that is, to the origins of opera when music did not yet dominate a theatre performance. The musical texture alludes to Renaissance vocal polyphony (as per the polyphonies of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina) and to the romantic language of Wagner. The background for the first, naively romantic, act are the sounds of a washing machine, which serves as an orchestra for all the goings-on.
 It is joined by sounds extracted from metal barrels and a steel box. The second act begins with the funeral of the young writer and unfolds against the backdrop of a crystal-clear piano mixed with German, Russian and Latin texts, which are gradually corrupted by alien phonemes that“pollinate” the vocals. In this manner, text becomes music.