The Divine Kiss

Last updated
Opera by Constantine Koukias
Librettist Constantine Koukias
Language English, Classical and Modern Greek, German, Hebrew
Premiere1998 (1998)
Brisbane, Australia

The Divine Kiss — The Evil is Always and Everywhere is an opera by Constantine Koukias a Tasmanian composer and opera director of Greek ancestry based in Amsterdam, where he is known by his Greek name of Konstantin Koukias. The opera explores the imagery of the seven saving virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, faith, hope and charity.

Constantine Koukias is a Tasmanian composer and opera director of Greek ancestry based in Amsterdam, where he is known by his Greek name of Konstantin Koukias. He is the co-founder and artistic director of IHOS Music Theatre and Opera, which was established in 1990 in Tasmania's capital city, Hobart.

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Showcasing talents of performers with disabilities

Commissioned by Access Arts Queensland and the 1998 Brisbane Festival, The Divine Kiss showcased the talents of performers with disabilities such as blindness and cerebral palsy. Singer in the 1999 IHOS Music Theatre and Opera production in Hobart, Janelle Colquhoun, said it was the most accommodating opera she had worked on since becoming blind. [1]

Queensland North-east state of Australia

Queensland is the second-largest and third-most populous state in the Commonwealth of Australia. Situated in the north-east of the country, it is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean. To its north is the Torres Strait, with Papua New Guinea located less than 200 km across it from the mainland. The state is the world's sixth-largest sub-national entity, with an area of 1,852,642 square kilometres (715,309 sq mi).

Brisbane Festival

Brisbane Festival is one of Australia's leading international arts festivals, and is held each September in Brisbane, Australia.

IHOS Music Theatre and Opera is a Tasmanian opera company was established in Hobart in 1990, by composer and artistic director Constantine Koukias, and production director Werner Ihlenfeld to create original music-theatre and opera works.

The title plays on the way disability is perceived in different cultures. According to the composer, in some cultures people with disabilities are revered as having been kissed by God, while in others their difference is perceived as bringing God’s curse on society. “At any time, it is perception alone that creates reality and defines optimism or pessimism,” says Koukias [2]

Artistic design

In the words of the Brisbane News, commenting on the Brisbane performance in 1998, "[i]magery is all in this opera: in one scene, a giant seahorse floats amid a swarm of aeroplanes; in another a blind girl regards the starry night through an antique telescope; in another an astronaut staggers through a wall of fire and Father Christmas speaks in Hebrew." [3]

Text

The opera is sung in modern and classical Greek, Hebrew, German and English. The text is composed of, and devised from, translations, adaptations, quotations and fragments from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible; Martin Luther; Herbert Maly; Byzantine hymnography; Stephen Hawking; The I Ching by Chuang-tse; the Torah; the Divine Liturgy; Carl Gustav Jung; AION; Ananda K. Coomaraswamy; Monoimos; The Guardian; Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species ; Plato; Paracelsus' Hermetic Formula — "Similia similibus curantur" ("Like is cured by like"); and Job ix:20.

Martin Luther Saxon priest, monk and theologian, seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther, was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, monk, and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation.

Stephen Hawking British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Stephen William Hawking was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge at the time of his death. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009.

<i>I Ching</i> text of ancient China

The I Ching or Yi Jing, also known as Classic of Changes or Book of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text and the oldest of the Chinese classics. Possessing a history of more than two and a half millennia of commentary and interpretation, the I Ching is an influential text read throughout the world, providing inspiration to the worlds of religion, psychoanalysis, literature, and art. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC), over the course of the Warring States period and early imperial period (500–200 BC) it was transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the "Ten Wings". After becoming part of the Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the subject of scholarly commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of Eastern thought.

The pre-recorded tapes for the opera were produced from numerous recordings of workshops with Access Arts members in August 1997 and April 1998 in Brisbane, Australia.

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Music is found in every known culture, past and present, varying widely between times and places. Since all people of the world, including the most isolated tribal groups, have a form of music, it may be concluded that music is likely to have been present in the ancestral population prior to the dispersal of humans around the world. Consequently, the first music may have been invented in Africa and then evolved to become a fundamental constituent of human life.

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References

  1. ↑ Colquhoun, Janelle, in Barbeliuk, Anne 1999, "Opera questions traditional concepts", the Mercury, 7 September 1999, p. 7
  2. ↑ Koukias, Constantine, in Wood, Danielle, "Discerning what a kiss might mean”, the Mercury, 19 June 1998, p. 30
  3. ↑ Brisbane News 2–8 September 1998, p. 3
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