GO! BORDERLESS OPERA LAB (Italy, Croatia, Slovenia)

Artistic Director: Gabriele Ribis

Origin, Position, Distance

Music and Lyrics: Sara Caneva
Soloists: Giulia Diomede, Massimiliano Migliorin

Before the Lineup

Music and Lyrics: Juraj Marko Žerovnik
Soloists: Daniela Esposito, Jure Pockaj, Giulia Diomede, Manuel Sedmak

Igor Pison – directorial concept and creative support
Vanessa Codutti and Gabriele Ribis – collaboration in staging
Ilaria Papis – costumes
Cecilia Carbonelli – makeup
Salvatore Angileri – production manager
Go! Borderless Orchestra
In collaboration with Cantus Ensemble
Sara Caneva – conductor

The GO! Borderless Opera Lab is proud to present two chamber operas comissioned from Italian composer Sara Caneva and Croatian composer Juraj Marko Žerovnik. The two operas fourty-minute pieces will be performed by soloists and a fifteen-member chamber ensemble. The operas draw from the cultural and historical heritage of Gorizia and Nova Gorica while building on the vocabulary of contemporary musical theatre enabling a new generation of creators to shape a new musical realm.

Composer, conductor, and sound artist Sara Caneva has already left an indelible mark on the world of classical composition. In the 2016/2017 season, she won the Y.A.P. at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, for composing and conducting a new original opera diptych. In 2020, she was nominated for the Classical:NEXT! Innovation Award and selected to take part in the first LaMaestra Conducting Competition at the Philharmonie de Paris.. Since then she conducted several world premieres across Europe, including her own works, as well as compositins by Balch, Zuraj, Xiao, Panni, and Kallionpää. Caneva’s music has been commissioned and realized by institutions such as Teatro La Fenice di Venezia, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Fondazione I Teatri, Romaeuropa Festival, Salzburg Mozarteum, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, Moscow Philharmonic, MusiikkItalo Camerata, BEAST, and broadcast on the Italian (RAI Radio3), Austrian (ORF Ö1), and French (France Musique) national radios. Since 2018 she has been publishing her works with Edizioni Suvini Zerboni. Caneva has developed mixed-media compositions and cross-disciplinary projects as composer-in-residence at the Bogliasco Foundation (US/IT), Kone Saari (FI), StAIR (AU), Künstlerhaus Otte1 (DE), Residencia de Estudiantes (ES). She is currently pursuing her PhD in Composition at the University of Birmingham, studying the influence of visual cues on music practice and audiences and examining the potential of inclusive forms of theatre in total darkness.

Rijeka native Juraj Marko Žerovnik graduated in piano and composition at the Zagreb Music Academy. As an Erasmus+ exchange student, he spent the academic year 2017/2018 in Karlsruhe, Germany, meeting and learning from Markus Hechtle, Vito Žuraj, and Wolfgang Rihm. Žerovnik has seen a number of his own works performed from a very young age (his Magnificat in 2009 and Allegro molto appassionato for piano trio in 2011). Žerovnik performed his Concerto for piano and orchestra with the Varaždin Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Pavle Dešpalj. His piece Ištipana hartija for soloists, choir and symphony orchestra, was commissioned by the Croatian National Theatre in Rijeka, and premiered in 2016 by soloists Dubravka Šeparović-Mušović and Giorgio Surian under the baton of Ville Matvejeff. Žerovnik perfected his craft with composition teachers such as Sebastian Themessl, Zeynep Gedizlioğlu, and Irvine Arditti. As of 2022, Žerovnik is pursuing a postgraduate degree in Ljubljana, under the tutelage of Vito Žuraj. He is also employed as a teaching assistant at the Music Academy of the University in Pula. He is a teacher, pianist, and composer, whose pieces are frequently performed across Croatia, Slovenia and Germany.

Admission free.

In case of bad weather, the concert will take place in the Concert Hall of the Music School Nova Gorica.

The project is co-funded by: