ACADÉMIE ACADÉMI ACADÉM ACADÉ ACAD ACA AC A

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS BIOGRAPHIES OPERA CREATION WORKSHOP JUNE 28 — JULY 2, 2021

MENTORS PARTICIPANTS

STAGE DIRECTOR KIM BOUTIN ANDREA BRETH RAQUEL GARCÍA-TOMÁS ALEX HO CAPUCINE JOHANNIN SIMON JOHANNIN VANASAY KHAMPHOMMALA KIRSTEN MILENKO ROBERT REID ALLAN KÉVIN ROUILLARD BAHZAD SULAIMAN ANDREW V.LY

3 MENTOR ANDREA BRETH STAGE DIRECTOR

Born 1952 in Rieden near Füssen, Andrea Breth grew up in Darmstadt. From 1971 to 1973 she studied literature at the University of Heidelberg. Her first directorial engagements took her to Bremen, Wiesbaden, Hamburg and (including 1981 Lessing's Emilia Galotti at the Freie Volksbühne Berlin), the Zurich Schauspielakademie and the Theater Neumarkt in Zurich. From 1983 to 1985, she was director at Theater Freiburg. Her production of Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba won her the first of a number of invitations to the Berlin Theatertreffen in 1985. In the same year, Theater heute voted her Director of the Year. From 1986 to 1989 Breth worked at the Schauspielhaus Bochum. Green’s South and Gorki's The Last Ones saw Andrea Breth win her second invitation to the Berlin Theatertreffen. In 1990 and 1992 she directed Kleist's Der zerbrochne Krug at the Burgtheater and O'Caseys The End of the Beginning at the Akademietheater. From 1992 to 1997, she was artistic director at the Schaubühne Berlin, where her productions of Vampilov's Last Summer in Chulimsk, Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and Chekhov's Uncle Vanya gained her yet another invitation to the Berlin Theatertreffen. From 1999 to 2006 she was resident director at the Burgtheater, staging Horváth's Der jüngste Tag, Kleist's Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, 's Maria Stuart, Albert Ostermaier's Letzter Aufruf and Nach den Klippen, Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm. Her directorial work at the Burgtheater from 2009 onwards included Motortown by Simon Stephens, Quay West by Bernard-Marie Koltès, Zwischenfälle (with scenes from Courteline, Cami and Charms), Kleist's Prinz Friedrich von Homburg in a co-production with the Salzburg Festival, Shakespeare's Hamlet, This Story of You by John Hopkins, Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party (in co-operation with the Salzburg Festival) and finally, Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill. She was once again invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen with Lessing's Emilia Galotti and Schiller's Don Carlos. Andrea Breth also directed Schnitzler's Das weite Land and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky at the Salzburg Festival. In 2009, she directed Albert Ostermaier's Blaue Spiegel at the and Kleist's Der zerbrochne Krug at the Ruhrtriennale. In 2011, she directed Isaak Babel's Marija at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, in 2013 Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman at the Schauspiel and in 2014, Pinter's The Caretaker at the Residenztheater in . Her work for opera from 2000 onwards includes Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice at the Leipzig Opera, Smetana's The Bartered Bride and Jakob Lenz by Wolfgang Rihm at the Stuttgart State Opera, Bizet's Carmen at the Styriarte in Graz, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at the Salzburg Festival, Janáčeks Katya Kabanova and La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, Lulu and Wozzeck by Alban Berg, Medea by Luigi Cherubini at the Schiller Theater of the and Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth at De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam. Andrea Breth has received numerous awards, including the Nestroy Prize for Best Director, first in 2003 for Lessing's Emilia Galotti and then

4 again for Zwischenfälle in 2011 and 2016 for John Hopkin's This Story of Yours. She also won the Berlin Theatre Prize in 2006, the Schillerpreis of the City of Marbach in 2015 and Der FAUST award in 2015 in the Musical Theatre Direction category for Jakob Lenz. She was Professor of Directing at the University of Performing Arts Ernst Busch in Berlin, and is a member of the Akademie der Darstellenden Künste in Frankfurt am Main, the Akademie der Künste Berlin, as well as the Bayerische Akademie der schönen Künste and the Order Pour le Mérite. She is also the holder of the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art 1st Class and the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In the 2018/19 season Andrea Breth is directing Die Ratten" by at the Akademietheater.

5 PARTICIPANT KIM BOUTIN DESIGNER FRANCE

Kim Boutin is a French designer, specialised in unconventional and speculative interfaces for the digital space. Since 2020, she is developing an art-based research project at EUR ArTeC, a consortium of French institutions including universities, art schools and museums. In 2015, she co-founded the design studio DVTK with 3D designer David Broner. Based between London and Paris, their practice incorporates art direction, 3D animation, interactive installation and critical design. In addition to their many collaborations with fashion and luxury brands (KENZO, Nike, Dior, Galeries Lafayette), the studio has recently been commissioned by cultural institutions to design interactive projects (ZKM Karlsruhe, Serpentine Galleries, MKG Hamburg). Alongside her design practice, Kim is an associate lecturer at London College of Fashion and regularly conducts workshops with art students (Royal Academy School of The Hague, Slade School of Fine Art).

6 PARTICIPANT RAQUEL GARCÍA-TOMÁS COMPOSER SPAIN

Raquel García-Tomás is a composer specialising in interdisciplinary creation who completed her Doctorate at the Royal College of Music. Highlights of her career include collaborations with the English National Ballet, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Dresdner Musikfestspiele. Recently she has received the National Award of Music 2020 (Spain), "for the interdisciplinary and innovative character of her personal musical language". Raquel was awarded El Ojo Crítico Música Clásica 2017 granted by RTVE (Spanish Radio and Television Corporation), "for the originality of her artistic approaches and the use and combination of her musical language with new technologies and video creation". Raquel's music has been premiered all around Spain in venues such as the Palau de la Música Catalana, L'Auditori de Barcelona, Teatre Lliure, Zaragoza's Concert Hall, Teatros del Canal, Teatro Español, La Casa Encendida and Auditorio 400 at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. Her works have also been performed in Berlin, Dresden, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Amsterdam, Luxemburg, Budapest, Vienna, Orléans, Lyon, Basel, Lausanne, Oporto, Edinburgh, Nagoya, Cairo, Buenos Aires, Rosario and especially in London (St. Martin in the Fields, Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal British Society of Sculptors, the Royal Academy of Arts and The Place). Raquel has received commissions and worked with the Oslo Sinfonietta, the Phace Ensemble, the Orquestra de Cadaqués Contemporary Ensemble, the National Youth Orchestra of Spain, the Madrid Symphony Orchestra, the Càmera Musicae Orchestra, the SIGMA Project, Experimental Funktion, CrossingLines Ensemble, Ensemble Sonido Extremo, Cosmos Quartet, Barcelona Clarinet Players, Barcelona Reed Quintet, BCN216 y PluralEnsemble among others. Within the framework of operatic creation, she has taken part in DIDO Reloaded (2013), produced by Òpera de Butxaca i Nova Creació Barcelona and, thanks to the opera Go, ÆNEAS, go!, has been awarded the Neuköllner Oper's Berliner Opernpreis'14. In 2015, she premiered her chamber opera disPLACE – Història d' una casa (text by H. Tornero and stage direction by P. Pawlik), at the MusikTheaterTage Wien Festival, with further performances in Teatros del Canal within the season 2016/17 of the Teatro Real in Madrid. Within the season 2017/18, she premiered the monodrama Balena Blava (text by Victòria Szpunberg) for one actress, large orchestra, choir and electronics, at the National Theatre of Catalonia. In 2019, she premiered the opera buffa Je Suis Narcissiste (libretto by H. Tornero and stage direction by M. Pazos), within the seasons of the Teatro Real de Madrid, Teatro Español, and the Teatre Lliure de Barcelona. The International Opera Awards have recently nominated Raquel's opera Je Suis Narcissiste for Best World Premiere. Recently, Raquel has received one of the Leonardo Awards (Fundación BBVA) to develop her new opera Alexina B., along with Irène Gayraud and Marta Pazos. This opera will be premiered within the season 2022/23 of the Gran Teatre del Liceu (Barcelona). www.raquelgarciatomas.com

7 PARTICIPANT ALEX HO COMPOSER UNITED KINGDOM / CHINA

Alex Ho is a British-Chinese composer based in London. Winner of the George Butterworth Award 2020, Alex has had pieces performed/commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Radio 3, Royal Opera House, Music Theatre Wales, and London Sinfonietta. Alex was joint-winner of the Philip Bates Composition Competition in 2016, winner of the Arthur Bliss Prize in 2017, one of Sound and Music's 'New Voices 2018', a Help Musicians UK Fusion Fund Artist in 2019, and one of the LSO's "Soundhub" composers 2018-2020. Alex is studying for a doctorate at the Royal College of Music with a full AHRC scholarship (LAHP Studentship supported by RCM). The 2020/21 season includes selection for artist development schemes with Montpellier Opera and National Youth Choirs of Great Britain. Alex is the co-director of Tangram, an artist collective made up of researchers, composers, and performers of Chinese and western instruments.

8 PARTICIPANT CAPUCINE JOHANNIN AUTHOR AND PHOTOGRAPHER FRANCE

Capucine Johannin was born in 1991 in the southern suburbs of Paris. After graduating from high school at the age of seventeen, she left France alone for Ireland, then went to work in a motel in the Australian bush, where the wide open spaces called for the first images. Freed from any framework, she focuses her practice on the things that are dear to her, the people who share her intimacy. Capucine and Simon Johannin carry out their plastic and literary research by crossing their views, but the joint work begins in earnest around L'Été des charognes, since a series of photographs is at the origin of the writing gesture. Since then, the intertwining of their two worlds exerts on each of their practices.

9 PARTICIPANT SIMON JOHANNIN AUTHOR FRANCE

Born in Mazamet in the Tarn in 1993, Simon Johannin grew up in the Montagne Noire. He left this area at the age of 17 and moved to Montpellier to study cinema at the University, which he quickly deserted. He then worked as a temp, then as a toy salesman, before joining the urban space workshop at La Cambre in Brussels from 2013 to 2016. His first novel, L'Été des charognes, was published in January 2017.

10 PARTICIPANT VANASAY KHAMPHOMMALA PLAYWRIGHT AND ARTIST FRANCE

Vanasay Khamphommala is a French-Lao dramaturg and performer who trained as a musician (but found it too difficult) and an academic (but found it too competitive). In 2017, they founded Lapsus chevelü and presented their first performance L’Invocation à la muse with performer and dominatrix Caritia Abell at the Festival d’Avignon in 2018. Lapsus chevelü develops a series of performances exploring European myths from a trans and postcolonial perspective: Venus and Adonis (2015), Orphée aphone (2019), Le Bain de Diane (2020), Écho (2022). Vanasay also works as a dramaturge and translates William Shakespeare, Howard Barker and Anne Carson for productions and publications.

11 PARTICIPANT KIRSTEN MILENKO COMPOSER AND CONDUCTOR AUSTRALIA

Kirsten Milenko (b.1993) is a Paris-based Australian composer and conductor. She is represented as an Associate Artist with the Australian Music Centre. In 2019, she was awarded the Roche Young Commission by Artistic Director of Lucerne Festival Wolfgang Rihm. She is a 2020 laureate of Fondation Royaumont. In 2020, her debut opera/dance-theatre work Dalloway premiered at Pulsar Festival (Denmark). She was later shortlisted to create a new opera with the Mannheim National Theatre (Germany) with Bea Redweik (librettist) and Johan Klint Sandberg (director); and is currently a participant of the 2020-21 Words and Music Workshop with the Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier (France). Milenko studied composition at the Royal Danish Academy of Music (MMus class of 2020) with Niels Rosing-Schow, Simon Løffler, and Jeppe Just Christensen, and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music (BMus class of 2018) with Liza Lim, Natasha Anderson, Ursula Caporali and Rosalind Page, where she received the 2016 Ignaz Friedman Memorial Prize. She currently studies conducting (CAS class of 2021) at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana with Arturo Tamayo. Prior to her tertiary education in composition/conducting, she studied International Relations and Piano at the University of New South Wales with additional studies in French and English Literature. She has attended academies and masterclasses with composers such as: Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Francesco Filidei, Dmitri Kourliandski, Catherine Milliken, Mark Andre, Zygmunt Krauze, Martin Bresnick - and conductors: Johannes Wildner, Jessica Cottis, Mark Shapiro. Her upcoming premieres include works for Ensemble intercontemporain, the Ulysses Ensemble, Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen.

12 PARTICIPANT ROBERT REID ALLAN COMPOSER UNITED KINGDOM

Robert Reid Allan is a Scottish composer, pianist and activist based in East London. He creates visceral, innovative and hard-hitting music with a focus on radically interdisciplinary and collaborative methodologies, drawing on techniques in the fields of documentary theatre, film, sociology and investigative journalism to examine real events, lives and stories. Previous and current collaborators include writer-director Gareth Mattey; videographer Sasha Balmazi-Owen; actor-dancer Richard Court; Ensemble Modern; Birmingham Contemporary Music Group; Royal Scottish National Orchestra; BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra; Psappha Ensemble; EXAUDI; Red Note Ensemble; Nevis Ensemble; and pianist Rolf Hind. Robert holds composition degrees from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and was Composition Fellow of the Guildhall School from 2018-19. Recent projects include include Physical Education, a work for actor, video and ensemble developed as Birmingham Contemporary Music Group’s Apprentice Composer-in-Residence 2018-19, which explores the violence, patriarchy and homophobia implicit in the high school gym class experience, which was nominated for the ISM Collaboration Prize at the Scottish Awards for New Music 2019; Terry Helenson’s Revolutionary Dreams, a cantata commissioned by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group to commemorate Karl Marx’s 200th anniversary; Anthems for Queer Youth, an interdisciplinary project exploring the meaning and importance of queerness to historical and contemporary artmaking; and Bermondsey, 1983, an ongoing documentary opera project examining the events surrounding the 1983 Bermondsey by-election, which saw the closeted bisexual Simon Hughes gain the seat following a bitter, violent and deeply homophobic campaign run against the openly gay Labour candidate Peter Tatchell.

13 PARTICIPANT KEVIN ROUILLARD ARTIST FRANCE

Born in 1989, Kevin Rouillard as graduated with honors from ENSBA in Paris in 2014. He participated to the 60th Salon de Montrouge and to the prize of Villa Emerige (Empiristes) in 2015. The same year, he also won the Foundation François de Hatvany prize. In 2016 his work was included in the exhibition Distopark, at Confort Moderne in Poitiers, and Le Nouveau monde industriel, (curating: Nicolas Bourriaud) at Galleria Continua / Les Moulins. His work has been shown at Les Abattoirs, FRAC Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse, for the exhibition Autour du Nouveau Réalisme, Les dadas des Daniel. In 2017: solo shows at l'Assaut de la menuiserie, Saint-Etienne and at The Chimney, New York, alongside with a group show with Centre d'Art Parc Saint Léger. In 2018, the Junqueira Artists Residency welcomed him in Lisbon, giving rise two solo exhibitions. More recently, following the SAM Art Projects prize received in 2018, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris is hosting its personal exhibition Le Grand Mur in 2020, while the Galerie Thomas Bernard opens, at the same time, its exhibition Soudure et Mayonnaise. For Kevin Rouillard, the context is never neutral, it determines the objects' status, their reception and value. Kevin Rouillard shows his lack of interest for oppositions between true or false, the original and the copy, in a system that creates value for artworks. This may also explain his reluctance to circumscribe his work to postcolonial commitment (despite a maternal link with Cape Verde): he belongs to a generation of artists that has perceived the paradox of being allocated an identity to origins of which they actually have little knowledge. To broach the subject, he therefore finds oblique, nonlinear strategies, such as this last series. To send products to Cape Verde, expatriates fill barrels because cargo transport is not expensive, he says. "Once they arrive, these barrels become doors, wood-burning stoves, brushes, houses. I decided to transform them into twisted shields, used in the formation of Roman soldiers as a collective shell. Like a Trojan horse, the barrels have also become paintings."

14 PARTICIPANT BAHZAD SULAIMAN* ARTIST AND PERFORMER SYRIA

Bahzad (born 1991) is a Kurdish visual artist, performance maker and a lecturer at the Saar University of Fine Arts. He has been living and working in Germany since 2016. Having a formal education in Sculpting from Damascus University of Fine Arts, he dealt with the shapes of objects and their spatial features. It made him realize that he is interested in exploring the movement of objects and people within a spatial structure, which led him to study Scenography at the Theatre Academy in Damascus. In 2019, he graduated with a Masters’ degree in Performance and Installation at the HBK Saar in Saarbrücken, Germany. He is a Interdisciplinary artist based on his diverse academic background in the field of art. He contributes his research, ideas and concepts that he develops through experience and Liveness, and shares them with the public. In general, Bahzad describes himself as a visual artist and Performance maker. In this context, he offers strong skills in presenting artistic concepts through adopting new and diverse materials and methods. Despite touching upon a wide range of subjects, his work mostly deals with the concept of body, space and improvisational forms of movement. With sound and sometimes without sound components, however, it is possible to use the body as an instrument in space, to create a dialogue between the body and the spectator, and to create a relationship between several elements. This includes the relationship between perception and the body as sculpture mass in this spatial context. Having Installation and Performance as the focal points of his work over the past years and being inspired by his cultural roots, his topics of work is often defined by an integration of folk dances and traditional practices, prevalent in the Middle East and Central Asia, into the movement sequences. This gives him an opportunity to explore the perception and impressions created by his work on a Western audience.

*This artist is part of the community and takes part to the immersive residency programme.

15 PARTICIPANT ANDREW V. LY COMPOSER UNITED STATES

Andrew V. Ly is a composer based in Washington, DC. His pieces have been performed by groups such as the Berkeley Symphony, Meitar Ensemble, Tonkünstler Orchestra, and ensemble mise-en. In 2015-16, he was in residence at the Universität der Musik und darstellende Kunst Graz as the recipient of a Fulbright Research Grant to Austria. Andrew’s music aims to forge meaning from the vast and disparate accumulation of human culture embedded in our contemporary world. He employs allusions to Western classical music to establish a common foundation upon which he builds new structures that simultaneously pay homage to, and explicitly interrogate the ongoing relevance of, this tradition. His aesthetic sensibilities draw from aspects of his lived experiences, such as Vietnamese rituals, songs, and ornamentation; expressions of gender and sentimentality from queer culture; and innovations in microtonality, aleatory, timbre, and conceptual framing as inspired by experimental West Coast and European composers. In addition to his musical career, Andrew is also a technologist and public servant. In 2019, he began a Presidential Management Fellowship at the U.S. Treasury Department’s Fiscal Service, where he serves as deputy product owner of the open data platform USAspending.gov. He is currently on detail to the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, working on issues related to intra-governmental coordination, financial oversight, and technological innovation. These experiences help inform his next project, an opera about the history of cultural exchange and economic competition between China and the West that seeks to synthesize musical and thematic threads from the 16th through 21st centuries.

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PHOTO CREDITS Raquel García-Tomás © Lluc Queralt Géraldine Pilgrim © Hugo Glendinning Simon Johannin © Capuçine Johannin Caitlin Smith © Elisabeth Feryn Bahzad Sulaiman © Christoph Holz

Graphic design: Irma Boom Graphic execution: Laurie Wagner THE ACADÉMIE DU FESTIVAL IS SUPPORTED BY: SINCE ITS CREATION IN 1998, THE ACADÉMIE HAS ESTABLISHED ITSELF AS A CENTRE FOR VOCAL AND INSTRUMENTAL EXCELLENCE, A PLACE TO REFLECT ON OPERA CREATION TODAY AND TO EXPERIMENT WITH NEW INNOVATIVE FORMATS, WHILE ALSO SERVING AS A SPACE THAT PROMOTES AND AIDS THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF YOUNG ARTISTS.

AMMODO

Ammodo initiates, develops and supports projects in the visual arts, performing arts and sciences. Artists and scientists often see things before other people do. They identify social trends, extend boundaries and make revolutionary discoveries. By providing artists and scientists with the space and time to really immerse themselves in their work, and by helping to showcase that work, Ammodo seeks to stimulate the development of the arts and sciences. Ammodo supports the realisation of the new opera Innocence and the Opera de-ci de-la residency.

FONDATION D’ENTREPRISE TOTAL

TotalEnergies Foundation actively leads and participates in actions of solidarity throughout the world on a daily basis through its sites, its subsidiaries and its corporate foundation which stems from Total Group. With its solidarity program, Total is committed to contributing to the development of the zones where it is present. While focusing on youth, Total’s actions can be seen in four different areas including road safety, forest and climate action, education and the professional integration of young people, and dialogue around the subject of culture and heritage. Within the context of this fourth objective, TotalEnergies Foundation supports artistic projects that promote social inclusion, empower youth, and bring vitality to the regions where Total Group is present. The vocal residency of the Académie is a project that brings together all these objectives. TotalEnergies Foundation provides support to the Opéra de-ci de-là residency whose aim was to help young artists create participatory forms of opera. Sharing these newly elaborated and condensed forms of opera which were created during the residency adds a dynamic element to the daily life of the city. These operas were performed in public spaces and showcase heritage that can sometimes be overlooked, the everyday life of the residents of Aix.

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Cofinancé par le programme Europe créative de l’Union européenne