De operaflat '07
After it had had success with the project Opera uit het Hart [Opera from the Heart] in 2004, Yo! Opera wished for nothing better than to follow this path; the path of community opera. The merging of art and reality, of both amateurs and professionals, young and old, serious and humorous, was a great success both artistically and publicitywise. Objectives in the field of talent development and education were more and more interlaced and - although it was not always easy to organise projects related to both - this connection proved both powerful and useful.
The 2005 edition of the festival saw the launching of a large-scale community project which was largely based on the approach of Opera uit het Hart [Opera from the Heart]. Opera in de Bus [Opera on the Bus] was its natural successor. Yo! Opera decided to organise a special event at the terminus of each Utrecht bus line. The city buses transported opera singers and their audiences. This is how De Operaflat came into being: it was organised at the terminus of bus route 1. In a block of flats at the Faustdreef (in a district of Utrecht where street names refer to operas), a true happening took place on Saturday afternoon in the festival. Yo! Opera invited singers (soloists, duos, trios, professionals, amateurs) to sing to an audience from the door openings of apartments inside the building. The flat was crowded with singers who sang about love, hate, betrayal, jealousy and grief. They sang their own repertoire, presenting all possible vocal styles: musical, gospel, Gregorian, pop, jazz, and of course opera.
This first edition of De Operaflat was a great success and was reason enough to repeat the concept. The loose style of the 2005 edition was in 2007 replaced by a more stringent format in which talent development of conservatory students was a spearhead. The slogan of this festival was 'Ik zing alleen voor jou' [I sing only for you] and the idea of the door openings of the apartments fitted it perfectly. Terms like communicating skills, flexibility, creativity and improvisation skills, all very important to Yo! Opera, were integrated in the assignments given to twentyfive composers to write a miniopera for the flats at the Faustdreef. They used texts written by pupils of the Openbare Basisschool Overvecht, based on the theme 'short encounters with strangers'. Composers and singers of nine Dutch conservatories took part in this mega project and many of them experienced the power of their performance on one square metre before an audience they could literally touch.
The 2005 edition of the festival saw the launching of a large-scale community project which was largely based on the approach of Opera uit het Hart [Opera from the Heart]. Opera in de Bus [Opera on the Bus] was its natural successor. Yo! Opera decided to organise a special event at the terminus of each Utrecht bus line. The city buses transported opera singers and their audiences. This is how De Operaflat came into being: it was organised at the terminus of bus route 1. In a block of flats at the Faustdreef (in a district of Utrecht where street names refer to operas), a true happening took place on Saturday afternoon in the festival. Yo! Opera invited singers (soloists, duos, trios, professionals, amateurs) to sing to an audience from the door openings of apartments inside the building. The flat was crowded with singers who sang about love, hate, betrayal, jealousy and grief. They sang their own repertoire, presenting all possible vocal styles: musical, gospel, Gregorian, pop, jazz, and of course opera.
This first edition of De Operaflat was a great success and was reason enough to repeat the concept. The loose style of the 2005 edition was in 2007 replaced by a more stringent format in which talent development of conservatory students was a spearhead. The slogan of this festival was 'Ik zing alleen voor jou' [I sing only for you] and the idea of the door openings of the apartments fitted it perfectly. Terms like communicating skills, flexibility, creativity and improvisation skills, all very important to Yo! Opera, were integrated in the assignments given to twentyfive composers to write a miniopera for the flats at the Faustdreef. They used texts written by pupils of the Openbare Basisschool Overvecht, based on the theme 'short encounters with strangers'. Composers and singers of nine Dutch conservatories took part in this mega project and many of them experienced the power of their performance on one square metre before an audience they could literally touch.
