Premiere 14/3/2025 Subsequent performances: 16*, 19, 22, 26, 30* March 2025 | Curtain-up: 20:00 / *14:00 | Ticket sales start on: 22 August 2024 | Prices: see page 161 | Location: Main Stage, Dutch National Opera & Ballet World premiere Sung in English Composition Philip Venables Libretto Nina Segal and Ted Huffman Musical direction Bassem Akiki Stage director and set designer Ted Huffman Lighting designer Bertrand Couderc Movement Pim Veulings Dramaturgy Nina Segal, Laura Roling One Claron McFadden Two Jacquelyn Stucker Three Nina van Essen Four Helena Rasker Five Miles Mykkanen Six Frederick Ballentine Seven Germán Olvera Eight Alex Rosen Residentie Orkest Co-production with Ruhrtriennale The end of a war. A child’s birthday party. A wall comes down in the centre of the city. Someone’s first kiss. The economy collapses. A new millennium. Temperatures rising. Friends dying. And everyone keeps buying new mobile phones. We Are The Lucky Ones tells the story of a generation. It is based on interviews with more than seventy people in Western Europe who were born between 1940 and 1949. It is the story of people who started out with little, who experienced everimproving living standards and are now leaving behind a world where such growth is no longer sustainable. Their memories form a collective time capsule of the past eighty years, told as one continuous life story in music theatre form. Following individual experiences and societal changes over the decades, the opera raises crucial questions about the relationship between the private and the political, the impact of our choices and what truly matters in the end. Successful duo We Are The Lucky Ones is composer Philip Venables and director Ted Huffman’s fourth music theatre collaboration, their first orchestral opera and their first collaboration with playwright Segal. The duo’s chamber opera Denis & Katya, a reconstruction of the tragic fate of two real-life Russian teenagers compiled from various perspectives, was a hit at the 2022 Opera Forward Festival. Their latest collaboration, The Faggots and their Friends between Revolutions, an adaptation of Larry Mitchell’s queer fairy tale, received rave reviews upon its premiere at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and is included in the programming of the 2024 Holland Festival. Bassem Akiki The conductor for this work is Bassem Akiki, who previously demonstrated his significant talents as an interpreter of new music with the world premiere of Alexander Raskatov’s Animal Farm. With the adventurous Residentie Orkest and a cast of singers of the highest calibre, We Are The Lucky Ones has all the ingredients of a world premiere to eagerly look forward to. We Are The Lucky Ones Philip Venables / Ted Huffman / Nina Segal Multi-voiced portrait of a generation 47
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