Peter Mazalán /

CURRENT PROJECTS:

Schwanengesang / 
Swang Song

The production Schwanengesang / Swan Song is based on Franz Schubert’s song cycle of the same name. The song cycle was his last major work. The motifs of the poems are the longing for life, departures and the search for a loved one. The production combines these songs with an original text by Jana Bodnárová, which analyses the longing for life in a seriously ill person.

Both works, despite their serious themes, bring hope and joy, a sense of peace. Schwanengesang/ Swan Song is a theatrical production that tells the story of a real-life interviewee – a 35-year-old woman and mother (of an autistic child) with breast cancer – in a documentary-like way. It is not meant to be her last song, certainly not when her treatment works and the tumor disappears. It is about the desire to live. The show analyses medicine as a science, with facts outpacing increasingly rampant conspiracies; the fascinating power of chemotherapy treatments that kill parts of the healthy body too, but above all heal.

The production is a process of following a patient from his preparation to his surgery to his awakening after anaesthesia. Watching him interact with the people he puts his life in the hands of. The project is not an 18th century anatomical theatre for the public. It is an intimate conversation, trust, fear and joy of life. A promise that we can trust science and experts.

The project is a theatrical performance combining classical music and drama. It is an important contribution to the debate on cancer prevention.

 

Premiere: 17. / 18. 4. 2024 _ Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava 

Programme

Kindertotenlieder / 
Songs on Death of Children

Songs on Dead of Children / Kindertotenlieder is a theater project analyzing the relationship between a parent and his child. It deals with the change of the child in its development. The theater project analyzes what it means to lose innocence, purity, immediacy, selflessness. How in a child, the process of growth, maturation and a sense of perfection are accelerated by his own parents. Aren’t the parents‘ desires projected onto the child too soon? Can a person keep his purity? Only a disease preserves a human purity; a person who knows no intrigues – is a little boy with a mental disability like that? Will he/ she still be an innocent child’s soul? The production connects the eponymous work of Gustav Mahler’s song cycle Kindertotenlieder with the real world of two little peers (7-year-old Zoja and an autistic Felix). Mahler’s transcendent songs are in this project not a sad scenes. They are the departure of children’s souls and their transformation. They do not mean death. They are a change and a loss of what fascinates us most about children – their purity.

In the project, a five songs become a five images of parents‘ interaction with their own children. Dancer Renata Ptačin and her daughter Zoja create a suggestive model in which they explore the limits overcome by the desire of a little dancer, musician and actress. Felix, an autistic boy, arrives to continue the analysis of what childhood happiness and its gradual transformation means. What does mean his happiness and his mother’s joy…

 

Premiere: CZ – 5. 6. 2023 / 19:30_Terén: Pole perfomrativního umění, Brno
SK – 18. 6. 2023 / 17:00_Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava

New version: Ich habe genug /
It is enough

Ich habe genug / It is enough  is a theatre project that aims to contribute to the discussion of equality and tolerance. In the production, the Bach’s cantata in connection with Hermann Hesse’s lyrics becomes an insight into the experience of a homosexually oriented person. Is Bach’s work an apparent aesthetic splendor that remains only a form to cover up doubts, fears or mistrust? Is this timeless music just an empty prayer that represents only the composer’s mastery? Can the viewer experience a new quality of contemplation and, by listening deeply in the presence of a real, affected person, open himself to an understanding of human difference and the desire for a better being?

 

Premiere-new version: Studio 12, Bratislava, 16. 12. 2022

CD: Das war ich / Bol som to ja 
Franz Schubert 

„Das war ich / Bol som to ja“ is based on the title of Schubert’s song. It is a confession, identification with one’s own identity – of one’s authentic being. The aim of this recording is not a vocal exhibition through well-known works. This dramaturgical concept brings a new perception of classical song through the confrontation of musical and philosophical statements that connect the inner message of self-acceptance and self-discovery of a man. As a vocal performer and at the same time a multimedia artist, Peter Mazalán works in his projects with various disadvantaged groups of people – people with autism spectrum disorder, seniors, LGBTI. This CD is thus a continuation of his activities, which shift the classical interpretive tendencies of vocal art.

Album release: June 2022