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Paradise now! Adam and Eva helpless
Lindstedt Palace / Address: Lindstedter Chaussee 1, 14469 Potsdam
Chamber opera by John Harris (music)
and Zinnie Harris (libretto & director)
Jane Frances Thorburn
Mac Alan McHugh
John Harris, synthesizer & live-electronics
Mac und Jane, climatologist and housewife, live an ordinary life – until one day a plant grows from the floor in their high-rise flat. Every attempt to tear it out touches the roots of their existence more sharply. The apple tree in the wrong place, in a desolate world heated by climate change, makes internalized feelings erupt, which Mac and Jane both had assumed buried a long time ago. Where to put all that life not lived? Can they rediscover each other under the tree of knowledge?
Lindstedt Palace, surrounded by its Lenné-designed garden is the setting for a nightmarish vision of the future. Two performers fathoming all nuances between speech and singing, the composer at the synthesizer wrapping their dialogue into a continuum of atmospherically dense sounds – that is all John and Zinnie Harris need for a strong piece of musical theatre: minimalist, at very close range, intense.
Duration: 40 minutes. In English.
A production by Sound Festival Aberdeen (World Premiere 2012).