The 70th Week

Sunday Showcase/UofL New Music Festival

The 70^th Week
Directed by João Pedro Olivera

Sunday, November 5, 3 pm  CINEMA+

Free

Recent Guggenheim Fellow and University of California Santa Barbara music professor João Pedro Oliveira, who heads the department’s Composition Program, brings The 70^th Week, a new video opera to the Speed Cinema as the kick-off event for the University of Louisville Music Department’s New Music Festival.

The Book of Daniel is probably one of the most mysterious books in the Bible. The description of the events and prophecies include murder, treason, orgies, and torture. It has also several interesting and enigmatic prophecies that can be interpreted to be related to the current times. Social instability, global war, mass extermination, and many other events can possibly be interpreted in the prophetic writings of a young boy.

The 70th week described in the book is one of these prophecies, and it relates to a state of constant war, sacrilege, and destruction, that will finally lead to a miraculous transformation of the world in a new space of peace and justice. This prophecy is then re-stated in the Book of Revelation, in the Bible.

The operatic action is re-interpreted on a screen, using several computer-generated images and sounds, as well as pre-recorded vocal lines and dance movements. Some of the eight scenes that constitute this piece are imagined representations of the events described in the book and some other scenes are symbolic. The texts used are direct transcriptions of the original texts in the book, sung in Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic. 2022, U.S., video, 64 minutes. Recommended for 15+.

Co-presented by the UofL Music School’s New Music Festival with programming assistance by Krzysztof Wolek, Director of Computer Music Studies, UofL.

CINEMA+  with a post-screening discussion with director João Pedro Olivera and Dr. Devin Burke, Music History Professor, University of Louisville.