Marpurgi at Slovene National Theatre

About the Event

One of many novelties that have been staged at the Maribor Opera and have unveiled many truths in regards to history of our common heritage is also a new opera named The Marpurgs. The opera is being created by an award‐winning Slovene composer Nina Šenk and librettist (and also director) Igor Pison after eponymous novel by Zlata Vokač Medic. The novel is written as a series of diary entries of two protagonists, Doctor Hannes and Mathias, who quite often harbour – similarly as Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza – opposite notions of the same events. Protagonists’ reflections on everyday phenomena gradually sketch out the history of a now long forgotten Jewish community of Marpurgs that were an important demographic element of Maribor – until the late 15th century and their eventual decline under the pressure of the Inquisition. Both protagonists, Hannes and Mathias, who will come to life through music of this contemporary opera, represent (in author’s opinion) one’s fate, who is constantly working his way through and lives in illusion – until that fatal turning point – of having control over one’s own life.