Credits
Original libretto by Friedrich Wilhelm Weiskern
Russian version of the libretto of the singspiel in one act (second revision) by Yury Dimitrin
Stage Direction: Rēzija Kalniņa
Video and Technical Assistance: Alexander Denisov and Video-Data Company
50 minutes
performed in Russian
Première of the production: 21 December 2013
Bastien und Bastienne was composed by Mozart, when he was only twelve years old. Its libretto was, in a way, a parody of the opera Le devin du village, popular at the time. The singspiel was commissioned by the rich physician Dr. Franz Mesmer and received its premiere in his estate in Vienna in 1768. It seems that it didn’t enjoy success and it was revived only 100 years later in Berlin. Singspiel is a form of German and Austrian comic opera with obligatory spoken dialogues; speech of the characters is full of colloquialisms.
Rēzija Kalniņa, Stage Director: “We would like to see how Mozart’s characters would behave in today’s realia, in our time of global communication, in the Internet era. Today in just one click we can find ourselves in Australia, and in Latvia in a moment; we can make friends everywhere — or more than just friends. But it doesn’t mean that we became more sincere in uttering our feelings. It will be a hilarious production, in which we would like to show — with a humorous undertone — a problem that today, it seems, crosses the borders. Virtual reality is not any more conceived by our main characters as a virtual one, it turns into real life. And if something goes wrong, probably, in that case we might see each other?”
Stage Director’s version: Bastien @shepherd and Bastienne @shepherdess are in love, they meet at the dating website meadow.be. Bsatien is busy with his computer games and is offline for a long time. Bastienne is upset: he beloved has forgotten her and doesn’t go online. Colas @quack, the seller of the Internet shop Shop.liar, is online. He suggests that Bastienne should order from him a magic potion that will cure her love pain. Meanwhile, Bastien, who lost all his virtual battles, goes online and the girl in order to tease her beloved goes offline. Colas explains Bastien, that Bastienne has a lot of admirers online and offers him a magic potion to cure Bastien’s jealousy. Bastienne is online at meadow.be. The lovers sort out their relationship, and wish each other well with other partners, but... suddenly the electricity goes off. It’s only then that the virtual lovers understand that they have been sitting next to each other.