References
selected
Carmina Slovenica has given a great effect to the Slovene and the world cultural space with its several important projects. Among those, let us single out some of them:
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Toxic Psalms (presented at Prototype:Opera/Theatre/Now New York, Operadagen Rotterdam)
- When the mountain changed its clothing, Heiner Goebbels Music Theatre (Golden Mask Award; presented at Ruhrtriennale, Steireisher Herbst, Autumn de Paris, Holland Festival, Melbourne Festival, Maribor Theatre Festival etc.);
- Vampirabile (the Prešeren Fund Award; presented at ISCM – World Music Days, America Cantat, Venezuela, Musical links, Sweden, International Festival Beijing, Hongkong Cultural Centre etc.);
- Placebo or Is There One who Would not Weep (presented at Maribor – European capital of culture 2012: Terminal 12);
- Rusalki (presented at St. Petersburg Philharmonie, Schauspiel Haus Basel, Istanbul Korfest, Urban fest Serbia etc.);
- CS Light (presented at Esplanade Cultural Centre, Singapur, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, University Theatre San Francisco etc.);
- Slovenian Sounds (Ford Heritage Association Award; presented at Moscow Easter Festival, Auditorium Culture Centre Rome, Nuit de Choer Brussels, Dresden Musikfestspiele, Polyfollia, Osaka Symphony Hall, Teatro Colon, at the Prešeren Fund Award ceremony etc.);
- Scivias (EBU Commission; presented at Teatro Cine Mendoza Argentine, Wratislavia Cantans etc.);
- L. Lebič: From Time Immemorial ... (ITI Music Theatre Now Award; presented at Opera and Ballet Slovene National Theatre Maribor).
Selection of the quotes from the media:
Opera New Magazine: … a constant stream of ideas, voice, movement, impressions and dosed emotion. In audience, you cannot do much more than almost breathless look and marvel at so much quality … Theater spectacle … a theater which aims for perfection in any discipline …
Theater Mania: … the grandiosity of the staging rivals what one might see at the Met … an overwhelming aural and visual experience … Šilec presents her arcana with a heavy dose of beauty and wonder …
The New York Times: … vibrantly theatrical, genre-blurring, unusual in its techniques, eclectic in its musical style and politically charged … Ms. Šilec is savvy about maintaining dramatic momentum, and the performers execute every shift in tone with subtlety and agility ... striking new work by the rabidly talented Carmina Slovenica … the ensemble and its director, Karmina Šilec, have created haunting images … Toxic Psalms adds a savage yet polished theatricality to the mix as well as an ambiguity all too rare in American performance … all add up to an evening that’s bracing yet, perversely enough, enchanting …
Opera World: … Carmina Slovenica is the musical answer to Bausch's groundbreaking concept of Tantztheater …
New York Music Daily: … breathtaking and equally relevant multimedia suite ... Šilec’s direction toyed with crowd dynamics on both the conformist and nonconformist sides with a coldly sardonic humor that offered momentary respite from the lingering bleakness of the music … a sonically thrilling, disquieting premiere for Karmina Šilec’s Toxic Psalms …
The Wall Street Journal: … power of the performers … haunting theatrical moments …
Le Monde: ... they radiate fantastic energy, composure and professionalism on stage ... they can do anything... with that marvelous energy, composure and professionalism...
New York Observer: … strikingly staged by Karmina Silec… visually the show was elegantly spare … Carmina Slovenica are collectively and individually heroic, they sent their voices pealing out like a band of angels …
Agence France Press: … innovative theater company Carmina Slovenica … intellectually challenging …
San Francisco Classical Voice: …Carmina Slovenica are in your face, created by women, driven by women, not afraid to show their teeth or shout down injustice … pure talent and virtuosity is astounding … the languages, time periods, and cultures blurred into visceral emotion and reaction ...
The Telegraph: … Carmina Slovenica gained a world-wide reputation for their powers of story-telling through choral songs … joyous moments of collective energy or anarchy that these astonishing performers shone, and the piece itself really came alive …
Basellandshaftlische Zeitung: … Karmina Šilec’s choral opera Fauvel is a really interesting, multilayered and a very aesthetic work ... captivating beauty ... veritable Theaterspektakel with immense beautiful images ... like a bulky work of art in a museum that refreshes, encourages us to think, distresses and embraces at the same time. And that is the reason why it continuously invites the viewer to new observations – if one only allows it ...
Delo: ... gesture, facial expression, choreography and the dynamics of the performers are mainly in the service of graduating suggestiveness, the images and stage tableaux are never self-sufficient; they are dosed with precision, without causing distraction or offering misleading emphasis of the substance; there is always and only music in the forefront. And how extremely diverse and heterogeneous it is; an exceptional sense of combining what appears to be incompatible, culminating into a surprisingly homogenous totality in the end - yet another quality of the director ...
Theatre review Melbourne: ... the world renowned ‘Vocal Theatre Carmina Slovenica’… the theatrics and the beauty of music and glamour of vocals …
Neue Musikzeitung: ... professional precision that leaves one speechless. From choral singing, through crystal clear choral speaking, to simple stage movement – individual, in groups, as a whole, with or without props … and that is of course where the similarity to Heiner Goebbels’s understanding of theatre can be found …
Večer: … precision, elegance and suggestive power, incredible sensibility with the right measure of how musical and scenic elements are incorporated into a convincing corpus … creates a mystical atmosphere without mystifying, reaches a hallowed status without allegory; the demanding repertoire chosen without artistic hermetism, dramatic effect reached without being pathetic, set and costume design perfected without pompousness or even exhibitionism …
Paarol: ... Vocal Theatre Carmina Slovenica like laser beams through the soul … You have to hear and see it to be able to believe it ...
Opera News/Opera Guild: … terpsichorean radicalism that were still often as physical as they were musical…wonderful cohesion… aural equivalent of Bausch’s Tanztheater, if you could imagine her medium-challenging dancers also singing…