“What aim, what future, what peace, Will your hard profits buy?” is from the opera Peter Grimes, which is programmed for October 2024 at Dutch National Opera, and it forms the key question for this season. The question returns in We Are The Lucky Ones, a new opera by the composer Philip Venables and director Ted Huffman, which will have its world premiere during OFF. The opera is based on interviews with the ‘lucky generation’, people who grew up in the years after the Second World War and experienced growing affluence throughout their lives. This work draws a contrast between the big shifts in society and small-scale, personal memories. The comparison prompts various questions: What counts as happiness and who decides what ‘happiness’ means? Does one person’s happiness inevitably come at the expense of another’s? And how do these people’s lives relate to the current state of the world? Another premiere on the programme is OUM, a production inspired by the legendary singer Oum Khaltoum. Her voice resonates like a heartbeat throughout the Arab world and beyond. Up-andcoming director Kenza Koutchoukali and her team are creating a production centred on this unique figure and how she reverberates in the lives of successive generations with Arab and North African roots. Koutchoukali is working with composer Bushra El-Turk, who is creating a stir in the international opera scene. With the outstanding musicians of the Amsterdams Andalusisch Orkest and with Theater de Meervaart as partners, this promises to be an unforgettable production. Every year during OFF, director Gregory Caers astounds audiences with his theatrical experiments in collaboration with large student groups. In 2025, he will be creating a production entitled Codes, as a gift to the city of Amsterdam as it celebrates its 750th anniversary. Students from Rotterdam’s MBO theatre school will once again be involved, but this time they will be joined by various choirs from Amsterdam. Together, they will return to the origins of various rituals and use that information to develop a modern-day celebration that discards religion and promotes solidarity. Founding partner Production partner After decades of prosperity and economic growth, it seemed as if progress towards a perfectly happy world was unstoppable. But that proved to be an illusion that has gradually faded since the start of the new millennium. The Opera Forward Festival (OFF) 2025 looks both backward and forward: how did we get to where we are now, and where are we heading? What is our aim, what is our future, and what kind of peace do we want? OFF 2023 OFF 2023 | Photo: Isabell Janssen 45
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