World premiere of Isidora Žebeljan’s opera Nahod Simon In the Musiktheater im Revier

28 Feb World premiere of Isidora Žebeljan’s opera Nahod Simon In the Musiktheater im Revier

In the Musiktheater im Revier opera house in Gelsenkirchen (Germany), on May 2015, the world premiere of Isidora Žebeljan’s opera Nahod Simon was staged. This composition, being the fifth opera by Isidora Žebeljan, was created as a piece commissioned by Musiktheater im Revier, and the premiere was followed by four more performances, on 31. May, 12, 20. and 26. June, and was performed to a packed hall. The libretto for the opera, based on the Serbian folk-poem Nahod Simeun and the novel The Holy Sinner by Thomas Mann, was written by Borislav Čičovački, while the opera was directed by a Dutch director Michiel Dijkema. The opera involved more than 20 vocal soloists, while the main roles were performed by the Polish baritone Piotr Prochera and German dramatic mezzo-soprano Gudrun Pelker. Along with them, the performance of the opera included the Musiktheater im Revier Choir, the Children’s Opera Choir of the Choral Academy in Dortmund, Neue Philharmonie Westfalen and five instrumental soloists from Serbia. This large music ensemble, which consisted of approximately 200 people, was led by a Finnish conductor Valtteri Rauhalammi. The opera was sung in the Serbian language, which was the first such case in the history of the German opera theatre, and also in the history of Serbian music.