View source for Two:30

''[[Two:30]]'' is a showcase of two operas presented by [[Cape Town Opera]] in Stockholm as part of the 2:30 series in collaboration with the Stockholm Opera Hogskolan (the opera school) and thereafter in Cape Town, staged in a warehouse in Epping (13–15 June 2013).

The operas are:

* ''[[Between a Rock and a Hard Place: an Anatomy of a Mining Accident]]'' ([[Philip Miller]])
* ''[[Sing the Body Electric]]'' (Carl Unander-Scharin)

'''For more information on each opera, see entries below.'''

==''[[Between a Rock and a Hard Place: an Anatomy of a Mining Accident]]''==

Using a 1967 miner's dictionary of ''[[Fanakalo]]'', issued by the Transvaal Chamber of Mines, the performers declaim and sing in 'call and response' style, mining terms and phrases in Fanakalo with their primary translations from the pages of the dictionary. In addition to the Fanakalo dictionary, a second archival text forms part of the libretto: A register of accidents from the mining company, Simmer and Jack Mines, which is lodged in the Cullinan Library at the [[University of Witwatersrand]].

The musical language of the opera uses the voices of the singers to create the rhythms and sounds of the miners' tools: shovels, drills, pick axes, explosives, and heavy machinery turn underground life into a cacophony of intense noise. The singers on stage played a specially devised 'sound-sculpture' built by the sculptor and engineer Mark O'Donovan. This instrument is made up of a series of mining picks individually tuned to distinct musical notes.



==''[[Sing the Body Electric]]''==







== Sources ==

[[Wayne Muller]]. 2018. A reception history of opera in Cape Town: Tracing the development of a distinctly South African operatic aesthetic (1985–2015). Unpublished PhD thesis.

"A forty-minute one-act subterranean opera". University of Cape Town. 11 July 2013. https://humanities.uct.ac.za/apc/articles/2013-07-11-forty-minute-one-act-subterranean-opera


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