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In body | În trup

chamber opera

Client

//  Diana Rotaru
//  Event poster
'In Body' / 'În Trup', on an original libretto by Ciprian Măceşaru, is a poetic-surrealist meditation on the identity ambiguity: are we our body or are we what we think? How much does our gender matter? These thoughts are presented through the help of the damned couple Hamlet-Ophelia, each of them captive inside the other’s body. Hamlet’s masculinity is represented by antlers (the royal aggressiveness), while Ophelia’s femininity is suggested through flowers – that are also present in her famous death scene. The timeless, magical setting is rich in symbols (the stag, the forest, the light/darkness dichotomy, the lake, etc.). The center of the show hides an 'opera-inside-an-opera' (another shakespearian allusion) that comments upon the social labeling of the Woman and the Man in a contemporary world.

Diana Rotaru’s music (performed by SonoMania Ensemble) transposes the polysemy of the text in a postmodern sonic language that slides through oneiric, ritual, humour, drama and other narrative colours.

One of the most visible young Romanian composers, Diana Rotaru (b. 1981, Bucharest) and also an active promoter of new music in Romania, she has written over 50 works, from chamber and orchestral music to chamber opera, multimedia shows and film soundtracks.

© 2025 by Maia Manolescu.

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