Librettist: Dimitri Verhulst
Date: 2016
Language: English
Duration: 80 minutes
Small-scale
Woman: soprano
Man: countertenor
Man: baritone
The opera stages a stark paradox. On the same stretch of shore—the real-life migrant crossing point of Lampedusa—a trio of tourists (two men and a woman) freely enjoys the pleasures of a seaside holiday: drinking, sunbathing, and living with reckless abandon.
Simultaneously and in the same space, others fight for survival, their desperation and peril forming a chilling counterpoint. The work asks: What does hell look like today? It proposes that a false paradise—a sunny beach where extreme privilege and extreme desperation violently coexist—is a modern Boschian hell on Earth. The music and characterizations deepen this: the baritone embodies pride and selfishness, the countertenor raises ethical questions, and the soprano evolves into the work’s most potent force.
Fl | 2 Cl | 2 Tpt | Tbn | Perc | 2 Vln | 2 Vla | 2 Vc | Cb
Commissioned to mark the 500th anniversary of Hieronymus Bosch’s death, Bosch Beach is a contemporary opera that transplants the Flemish painter’s vision of sin and morality to the modern-day beach of Lampedusa.
The libretto by Dimitri Verhulst is inspired by Bosch’s painting The Seven Deadly Sins. The opera presents a paradoxical world where tourists indulge in carefree holiday pleasures alongside migrants risking everything for survival. The work is non-narrative, structured as a series of characteristic pieces (drinking song, prayer, etc.), with the music splitting into two distinct “tracks” to embody this stark contrast
Date: 2016
Venue: Concertgebouw Brugge, Bruges
Commission: Jheronimus Bosch 500 Foundation
Stage Director: Kris Verdonck
Music Director: Etienne Siebens
Cast: Marion Tassou, Rodrigo Ferreira, Damien Pass and Asko|Schoenberg Ensemble
