Commissioned by the Warsaw Autumn Festival, with the support of Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
Fund: Ministério  da Cultura / Direcção Geral das Artes
Remerciements: Adalberto Alves, Susana Janic, Hiroyuki Saeki, Ylva Gruen, Saoud al-Tayari, Jakub Szczypa, João Cutileiro

A Laugh to Cry explores some of the essential concerns of human beings, transported to our time in the context of a globalized world, formalizing themselves in a reflection on the hegemonic power of destruction of memory, devastationof the Earth while speculating on the collapse of humanity.It’s a cry of freedom against tyranny, against the destructionof Art, against the devastation of the earth, against theomnipresence of arrogance and injustice, against of oppression; it's a glimpse of the loss of humanity, and theforeseen loss of civilisation as we know it.

The opera develops on the border between dream and reality,between the visible and the invisible, between laughter and tears.

A Laugh to Cry with music and multilingual libretto by MiguelAzguime (Portuguese, French, English, and several otherlanguages in the final part) is a metaphysical theatre that putseternal archetypes to music and on stage. The interpretationinvolves five characters, represented by two sopranos, a bassand two narrators (woman and man); 7 acoustic instruments: flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, piano and percussion andelectronic media in real time. The staging is based on multiple video projections built in symbiosis between music and text.

A NEW OP-ERA (a new era for the opera)

a MisoMusicPortugal/Miso Ensemble project

PHOTOS