41 The Opera Forward Festival has pushed the boundaries of opera ever since 2016. This eleventh edition continues that tradition, with three world premieres, original stories that inspire and move, and events uniting artists from different generations and backgrounds. During the Opera Forward Festival (OFF), we put opera at the heart of today’s society and explore new avenues for the future of this art form. To do this, we engage some of the most exhilarating creative voices of our day. Established artists experiment within an art form they know intimately, alongside emerging creators who are new to the genre. Three world premieres Celebrated director Barrie Kosky is renowned for his compelling stagings of music theatre, always imaginative and daring. He now turns to a completely new opera, collaborating with the idiosyncratic and pioneering composer Du Yun — who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for her opera Angel’s Bone — and librettist Royce Vavrek. Red Fox is an opera comprising three stories about the impact of dementia, both on those who experience it and on the people close to them. It is a tribute to love — sometimes complex — which still finds a way forward in the most difficult circumstances. Composer Vasco Mendonça and director Nina Spijkers are creating a new chamber opera based on the Henrik Ibsen play Hedda Gabler. Together they bring this iconic character to the opera stage. In his music, Mendonça explores the emotional complexity of the work through his signa- ture combination of clarity and tension. Spijkers has built a reputation for her contemporary, engaged interpretations of canonical works. With a cast of five outstanding singers, this promises to be a special production. American artist Michael Matthews arrived in the Netherlands in the early 1980s and proceeded to build an impressive oeuvre as both a performer and a theatre maker. The Monster Trilogy comprises the last three plays Matthews wrote, in the years leading up to his death. In this co-production with Toneelschuur Producties and RIGHTABOUTNOW INC., Dutch National Opera presents a musical adaptation of this work. Composer Cassie Kinoshi blends opera, jazz, soul, spoken word and the typical sounds of the eighties and nineties into a musical work that is moving and confrontational. Director Nita Kersten brings Matthews’ modern myths to life, with Gothic figures becoming exemplifications of loneliness, rejection and the longing for connection. The student Labs of OFF Ever since the first edition of the festival, the various Labs, where students from a range of creative disciplines delve into opera, have been at the heart of OFF. Composers, writers and directors come together to create short new operas that are presented one after another in The Carousel. Other students explore the genre using new media, for example in the form of a film-opera for the large LED screen in the foyer of Dutch National Opera & Ballet. Behind the scenes, the OFF Think Tank reflects on the art form and discusses new possibilities for making opera future-proof. Encounters and exchanges In addition to these productions, the festive programme also includes dialogues and concerts. For the festival centres on encounters and exchanges: between different generations of opera makers, between Dutch and international perspectives and — perhaps most importantly — between the artists, their work and the audience. Photo: Olivia Witmond Production partner OFF 2025
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