Muziektheater Transparant & Blindman

If the world were in ruins, what would music still mean to a seventeenth-century composer? This is the central question in 'Utopia :: 47 - a very last Passion' by the Flemish composer and Blindman leader Eric Sleichim. This two-part opera performance links the final year of the Thirty Years War - 1647 - to the final year of a future thirty years war - 2047. The beauty of the sort of spiritual music composed by Heinrich Schütz during the Thirty Years War was an ultimate sign of hope in a better world. But would we, in our ultra-post-modern times, still be sensitive to such an ethical appeal? 'Utopia :: 47' is a reflection on the situation of the present. Can a new society arise out of the fragments of a culture? Do we continue to believe in beauty and utopia? Crystallizing slowly out of the musical storm come the voice of a woman and the story of a modern passion, a war story that could be acted out in any number of places.