 At this year’s BEMUS (Belgrade Music Festival), the opinion both of critics and the public, often at odds, was in accord; the high point of the Festival was Isidora Žebeljan’s opera The Marathon Family. The opera premiered in Belgrade next to its world premiere at the Festival in Bregenz, held last August. Though in recent years the author has composed several chamber and orchestra pieces, and though her previous opera Zora D (staged 22 times in four years in five European countries) was a great world success, The Marathon Family was the leading theme of our conversation.
- When was your first encounter with opera, in childhood I suppose? What were your impressions then?
- It is interesting to say that in my youth I didn’t like opera or the operatic way of singing. I didn’t like opera because I didn’t know it, and operatic singing sounded artificial to me then, though I had not had the opportunity to hear the great singers. This aversion towards that kind of singing went so far with me that I engaged the then famed urban pop-rock singer Igor Pervić for a solo song for my entrance examination for composition (to the outrage of some commission members). Later, during years of musical maturation, I began to think about writing an opera of another type, different from those that my imagination, shaped by prejudices, thought that opera was. However, this impulse also had its good sides, primarily because I began listening to and watching operas, and that finally led me to love this genre. Opera is a special musical form and demands excellent presentation in order to be understood and completely accepted. I could compare it with translating some important literary work, like Thomas Man’s Joseph and His Brothers, which is so complex that only a superb translator can present it to the public in its true form, while others are failures regardless of the effort invested.
- What, in your opinion, tops the world opera repertory? Are these operas pointers regarding dramaturgy or composing in a technical sense?
- First I would single out Bizet’s Carmen as one of the most genial works ever written, then Verdi’s Othello, La Traviata, almost all of Puccini’s operas, Richard Strauss’ Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. Mozart’s Magic Flute, Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, Rossini’s operas, some parts of Handel’s and Vivaldi’s operas, Glass’ opera Einstein on the Beach, Prokofiev’s Love of the Three Oranges, Ravel’s The Child and the Enchantment (L’enfant et les sortileges), De Falla’s Master Peter’s Puppet Show, but perhaps first of all Janáček’s Káta Kabanová, Jenufa, The Cunning Little Vixen, From the House of the Dead. However, the fact that I spent many years writing music for theatre played a great role in my opera work because the theatre became close and dear to me, and its problems and demands quite clear.
- What are the qualities of the human voice you appreciate most and which are the most inspiring for you?
- I most like singers who are able to interpret various roles and situations, which means different characters, music dynamics and requested articulation. Maria Callas was this type of singer, and today Angela Georgiou, who sings the most different roles in an absolutely phenomenal way: from Gounod’s Faust through Traviata to Carmen.
- I think that studies of composition in Serbia don’t deal with opera as a special field of study. How then, does a young composer prepare to work on an opera?
- Every work demands unconditional love and commitment. Being thus expands and then love returns to man in its purest form. I want to say that with love, great work and commitment open the right paths by themselves.
- Zora D, then the Marathon Family. Would you illustrate the similarities and differences between these two complex works?
- These two works are absolutely different by genre – Zora D can be described as fantasy with elements of melodrama and thriller, while the Marathon Family is black comedy. In view of this definition, it is clear that the melodic elements in Zora D last longer, because it is lyrical; while for the Marathons, coloraturas are more characteristic. In the Marathon Family there are many ensemble scenes, resulting from the plot and presence of characters in certain scenes, while in Zora D monologues and duets are more frequent. However, the curiosity is that in the Marathons very quick tempos prevail, which I sometimes note as Turbo, one eighth note = 208. On the other hand, the musical vertical and certain melodic-rhythmical components characteristic of my music have remained trademarks of both these works.
- How do you select a topic and texts, how do you adapt it to your idea – both non-musical and musical ones?
- There is no rule. I rely on intuition and it is very important to me to be mindful of what I am doing because only in that way am I able to see what is musically, literally and dramatically correct and what is not.
- Cooperation and understanding between a librettist and composer are extremely important for the success of an opera. Some authors, for instance Konjović, wrote librettos for their operas alone, according to existing poetic, dramatic or belletristic works. What in your opinion made them do this? What was your role in writing the libretto for The Marathon Family?
- An ideal situation for an opera is that the libretto is written by the composer because a total unity of the most important operatic aspects is achieved in one artistic coordinate system. And not only that, it would be ideal if the composer could also create the set design, costumes and to produce his or her own work for the same reasons. However, on the other hand, especially when a libretto is in question, this would assume that the composer is also a skillful writer and playwright as well, which actually is quite uncommon. I don’t dare to write a libretto, but I would gladly try to direct one of my operas, naturally if someone would give me an opportunity to do so. Currently, I am co-librettist for my operas because during composing I often change a text, the rhythm of sentences, the words and their order, adapt them to singing, to music itself.
- Apart from the composer, who in your opinion are the key figures in an opera production: the librettist, director, the main protagonists? How important are the roles of costume and set designers?
- In an opera, next to the composer and librettist, the first place belongs to the conductor. Almost everything depends on a conductor’s imagination and energy. He makes an opera performance come alive. Naturally, the singers are very important as well. Above all, the main protagonists because their skill and charisma convey music and drama to the audience. Then, the musicians are quite important for the essence of a performance, because they are the pillars of an opera, as with a good conductor they can present average singers in a much better light. Regarding direction, it is above all important not to interfere with the music; the director ought not to expose himself too much, but serve the music and opera in full. This requires a high level of understanding and knowledge of music from a director, and directors with such qualities are extremely appreciated in the world. Set designers and light designers give a stronger mark to an opera than its director. Naturally, the opera is above all a result of team work and an understanding of all artists involved.
- Would you compare the differences between creating a musicscenic work and a work belonging to other musical genres?
- The music-scenic work is much more complex and accordingly much more demanding, first regarding the time needed to write it. An especially difficult discipline in creating the music-scenic work is carrying out and conceiving the music and scenic energy levels to the very end, with balance, so that every dramatic situation, in its most minuscule detail, can be realised musically at the right moment and with the right effect on the listener. Such works, aside from details, demand deep concentration and a comprehensive view of the whole, as well as the right feeling for good proportion and selection of authentic energy levels of individual components. Pure musical works require an alchemical power of the composer to win the audience only through musical elements, which is certainly a delicate task, especially nowadays when the need for listening, which means penetrating within, has been fully replaced with the need to watch, which is an act completely turned away from the inner self.
- Did your cooperation with Emir Kusturica influence your work? It seems to me that I notice some similarities regarding sensibility.
- The source of my music lies, in part, in the Balkan area for which a special kind of Balkan magical realism – fantasy, or Balkan expressionism, or surrealism, is characteristic – and can be found in my music and is also present in Kusturica’s opus. These features, however, are present in every author from Serbia in a different way, in Dušan Makavejev, Saša Petrović, Dušan Kovačević, Ljubomir Simović, Milorad Pavić, Miloš Crnjanski etc. When we speak about Kusturica’s movies, I would say that an extreme stylisation, which has become characteristic of his late opus, is not present in my music. On the contrary, the pagan authentic rhythmics, melodic elements and colours that can be connected with Serbian, Albanian, Georgian, Istrian, Romanian but also Japanese and American soils, are on the absolutely opposite aesthetic side of such stylisation, when we speak about true expression of the work.
- The programme booklet for the Marathon Family includes your text in which you explain some of your creative modus operandi and creative sources. I note, however, that your music is your special world and it seems that it achieves great success due to its integrity and authenticity. Am I right in that and how would you explain this personal music sphere of yours?
- Your question is interesting and intriguing because no matter how much I try to approach my music and observe it from different angles, it remains an integral and natural part of myself, so that it flows naturally, in the context of a general view of music, and I am not able to perceive it correctly so I don’t even try. When I connect my music with a certain source, I do this in order to prevent some trivial, arbitrary and incorrect interpretation, which today, in the sphere of textual observation about music, is unfortunately too frequent. What I see is that newspapers and music magazines in West- European countries, where my music is performed, make some interesting observation on its originality.
- At the beginning of your career you worked a lot in television – in "Video tilt". I suppose you were primarily attracted by the new possibilities that television offered in presenting music. What is your relation towards television today and would the script and challenges of a TV opera attract you?
- The time of "Video tilt" was a wonderful, nostalgic time, when culture and art really meant something in society. Certainly, television still offers a great spectrum of possibilities for expression, but the demands of society, created over years by that same media, are different. It would be great to make a TV opera, because opera would in this way gain in dynamics, the theatrical static would be neutralised, and it would open possibilities for visual play with details, which would enable music to be presented even more precisely.
We rounded off this interview with Isidora Žebeljan with a customary question about her current artistic preoccupation. She replied that she didn’t like to talk about "business and music in their phase of exploration" but that she might reveal that she was working on "new commissions from Great Britain, the Netherlands and Germany."
Before her lies another rich, successful and turbulent creative period.
| Isidora Žebeljan studied composition at the Faculty of Music Art in Belgrade under the class of Prof. Vlastimir Trajković. Since 2002 she has been teaching composition at the same faculty. In 2004 she received the prestigious Mokranjac Award, and in 2006 she became a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. | | 
