A visualised oratorio
We would like to warn the audience suffering from epilepsy, or hypersensitive viewers who are sensitive to intermittent light, that laser effects and strobe lights are used in the performance!
In 1993, the second joint work of the Merta-Moša duo premiered on 11 November, directed by Stanislav Mosha. After the almost pan-European success of the musical féerie Midsummer Nights’ Dreams the authors decided to bring to the stage a story that critics called “a performance that will give you pleasure, the pleasure of the agony of the search for answers” and “a modern oratorio – melodically and formally multifaceted, in which they managed to impressively unite the genre variety from scenes to operatically composed to deliberately trivial couplets”. In the 1990s, 201 performances were staged throughout the Czech Republic, including several months of guest appearances at the National Theatre in Prague.
The meditative work BASTARD in its verse libretto does not deny its inspiration from biblical stories, the Faustian theme and the character of Everyman, a popular figure not only in the Middle Ages. Essentially, the modern morality tale follows the classic structure of a dramatic text in which one particular man, in this case the Last Adam/Bastard, must undertake a long journey in which he hopes to find not only himself, but to vindicate a place in the sun for all of humanity. This “large-scale vocal-instrumental work for solo, chorus and text” attempts to answer the questions: “Where are we coming from and where are we going?” and “Who are we?” At the beginning of the story, we meet the characters of the Holy Spirit and Satan, who decide to compete for the Bastard’s soul, which desires power, wealth, and immortality. They send him on a long journey and both assume that they will take control of their protégé. Satan eventually wins over man and enables him to realize all his evil and selfish desires. In the cathartic conclusion, however, this unlimited power leads the Bastard to his own destruction. But the death of one man does not mean the end of human civilization.
Thirty years after its premiere, we have decided to bring this thematically immortal and still relevant work to the stage of the Music Theatre, this time directed by Petr Gazdík.
