Nina Šenk: canvas

Libretto: Simona Semenič
Directed by: Yulia Kristoforova
Conductor: Simon Dvoršak
Dramaturg and Choreographer: Ana Pandur
Set Designer: Vasilija Fišer
Costume Designer: Monika Colja

Performed by: Gaja Sorč, Laure-Catherine Beyers, Katja Konvalinka, Irena Yebuah Tiran, Aja Markovič
Ensemble of the Slovenian Chamber Music Theatre
 

Rather than a lyrical tale of love, the opera canvas is a raw deconstruction of female existence in a world defined (still, or perhaps once again, after a glimmer of change?) by the male gaze, containing echoes of Louise Bourgeois. 

The libretto by Simona Semenič and composer Nina Šenk is based on the myth of Don Juan, cast in the role of a passive canvas for the heroines’ projections. In this production, the power relations are even more pronounced – women become the canvas, while the absent Don Juan is an invisible ray inscribing their destinies with his absence. The idea of him shapes their dreams, fears, and the limits of their existence. In utilizing this relentless mirroring, the opera exposes the process in which women are predetermined through the imaginary evoked by Don Juan's promise.

In a world where womanhood is established as a response to the verticality of the male idea, the protagonists are trapped in the dynamics of objectification. They wander through their own existence as beings in constant motion – as beings who have lost their direction. Their destiny is not a matter of romantic longing, but of mere survival; they struggle to make their own fantasies legitimate and to prevent their lives from ebbing away prematurely. This objectification reaches its culmination with anatomically correct mannequins that occupy the stage together with and instead of the living bodies. Here, the woman is no longer an independent subject, but an object of medical or social treatment, torn between nature and culture. 

While a young girl on a stretcher fights desperately for her life – in stark contrast to the cliché image of a girl who wants to die – the banal cruelty of daily living unfolds around her. Men are indifferent to female histrionics, and rather than taking real action against violence, society responds merely with the question: "What will they think?" At the same time, the rhythm of the factory thrusts us into the world of cynical female workers who, paradoxically, still shape their desires through the absence of the subject that considers them just consumer objects.
Composer Nina Šenk's score won the 2022 Johann Joseph Fux Award, and the opera received its premiere in October 2023 in Graz. The work, a kaleidoscopic melding of identities and unrelenting soundscape, raises the question: “Who is really painting on our lives when we ourselves become nothing but a canvas?”