Nina Spijkers Interview Director Nina Spijkers is bringing Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler to the opera stage in partnership with composer Vasco Mendonça. Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Molinari portrays the complex protagonist, in a world premiere that gives Ibsen’s classic play a new, musical expressive power. constructed the play in a masterful dramaturgical manner. Every scene is shorter than the one before and you sense from the start that it will end badly, with the narrative sending us ever faster towards the abyss and Hedda’s shocking demise. The play has all the right ingredients for a successful opera.” Refreshing character Although Hedda Gabler was written in 1890, Spijkers argues that its theme is still relevant today. “We often think we’ve become more emancipated than is actually the case. I see Hedda Gabler as an exploration of what heterosexual marriage as an institution does to the life of a woman. Opera tends to favour archetypal women: loving, innocent and suffering. Hedda is different. At first sight, she does not come across as a likeable woman. But from both a personal and professional perspective, I want to get away from that notion that women should always be likeable.” Molinari: “Nowadays, we are finally teaching our children — girls especially — that they don’t need to smile at everyone if they don’t feel like it and they don’t always have to please others. Hedda is not a docile person and that makes her very refreshing. Even today, many women will be able to relate to Hedda’s frustrations with her social role, the frustrations connected with what it means to be a woman and wife, and the decision whether or not to have children. Another aspect that feels very Director Nina Spijkers and mezzo-soprano Cecilia Molinari on Hedda Gabler For Nina Spijkers, Henrik Ibsen’s play Hedda Gabler was ideally suited for an opera adaptation. “What the characters want from each other, what they think and feel, is quite clear rather than being hidden in textual subtleties. Yet at the same time, Hedda is a character who leaves much unsaid and who has this turbulent inner world. In productions of the play, you must dig deep for that to be seen. However, in an opera you can express her inner world through music and turn it inside out without using language.” Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Molinari also sees Hedda as the ideal opera character. “She is one of the most tragic characters in theatre history. Moreover, Ibsen 48 Opera Forward Festival
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