A Laugh to Cry is a contemporary opera in subject and technique about human dignity in a world market.
An act that is not a love story with named characters, but more of a dream play, a trip. The creatures on stage are a kind of human archetypes without sex, age and personality.
The text is poetic and begins at dusk then set it during the night where art and knowledge are reinvented, with the end of a dawn.
A set that is primarily video images projected on a giant ball, on full stage, on the actors, adding technology to acoustic music and lyrics. A drama for two sopranos, one bass and two narrators (a female and a male voice), seven acoustic instruments: flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, piano, percussion and live-electronics.
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“A Laugh to Cry” pursues Miguel Azguime goal, as composer and librettist, to grasp an ideal balance between language and music, to merge the language’s semantic and metaphorical components with its sonic values, in order to achieve his concept of “speech as music and music as speech”. “A Laugh to Cry” extends Miguel Azguime research on voice analysis, re-synthesis and processing, aiming at creating a dynamic continuum between timbre, harmony, rhythm and voice spectra.
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TEAM
Miguel Azguime – music and text composition, performance & concept
Paula Azguime (Portugal) – art director, video composition & concept
Frances M Lynch (UK) – soprano
Marina Pacheco (Portugal) – soprano
Nicholas Isherwood (USA / France) – bass baritone
Ágata Mandillo (Portugal) – speaker
Miguel Azguime (Portugal) – speaker
Petter Sundkvist (Sweden) - conductor
Norrbotten NEO (Sweden) - flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, piano, percussion
Sílvia Real (Portugal) - elements of choreography
31 da Atalaia (Portugal) – costumes
Perseu Mandillo (Portugal/ Denmark) – 3D contents, video editing & technical coordinator
André Perrotta (Brazil) – audio &video software development | CITAR researcher
Andre Bartetzki (Germany) – live electronics software development
André Baltazar (Portugal) – motion capture software development | CITAR researcher
Miso Studio (Portugal) - light, video & sound design
Commissioned by the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music, with the friendly support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation with co-production of the Norrbottensmusiken / Norrbotten NEO (Sweden), the Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music (Poland), the São Luiz Municipal Theatre (Portugal), the Center for Research in Science and Arts Technology (CITAR), Portuguese Catholic University in Oporto and Miso Music Portugal
