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Klaas de Vries (1944) and David Mitchell (1969)

Wake

Opera in four acts (2010)

with electronic music by René Uijlenhoet

On a completely ordinary evening, somewhere high in a block of flats, nine disparate but interrelated stories of passion, reconciliation, humour, TV football, the pain of adolescence and infirmity of old age, are suddenly interrupted by an unspecified catastrophe that changes the lives of eighteen people forever. Are there words to bridge the gap between us, the survivors, and those we have lost? When we give a voice to memory and emotion, what comfort will they bring?

Wake blends opera, mystery play, moving images and literary fiction in a powerful meditation on grief, transcendence and the human spirit.

The Nationale Reisopera and the city of Enschede asked composer Klaas de Vries and British writer David Mitchell (known for several novels, among them Cloud Atlas) to create a music theatre work to mark the tenth anniversary of the firework disaster that struck Enschede. We wanted to find an appropriate way to respond to that seemingly ordinary day, by the end of which the lives of so many people would never be the same again.

Synopsis

Act One: Requiem

Wake opens with a monumental choral composition wherein fragments from the traditional Latin Mass for the Dead are combined with quotations from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. At the end of act one the vocal soloists, hereafter known as the ‘dead’, become one with the chorus.

Act Two: Nine Rooms

During three rounds (passes) we meet with the eighteen occupants and visitors of an apartment building and are witness to their daily goings on. The ‘dead’ are played by singers and the ‘living’ are interpreted by actors whom, in this act, do not speak.

David Mitchell wrote a biography for each of the characters, which can be found in the programme that accompanies this production.

Act Three: When It Happened

The third act illustrates the most extreme, impacting and unexpected event in the lives of the characters. The music in this act is electronic and composed by René Uijlenhoet. We hear here the intensely personal accounts of the living.

Act Four: Rocks, and Stones, and Trees

A mystery play concludes the opera. The nine characters who have lost their lives engage in an imaginary dialogue with the living and with memory. This act concludes with a poem by William Wordsworth.

More information:

Klaas de Vries and David Mitchell on Wake:

http://www.nationalereisopera.nl/en/programma/producties_09_ 10/wake/speeldata/ - /programma/producties_09_ 10/wake/Klaas and David.doc/