Tramvestie invites to take a ride on the legendary tram No. 11

On 17 April, the New Stage hosted the world premiere of Tramvestie, a new Czech opera based on an eponymous collection of poems. We talked to the stage director Marek Bureš, whom we asked about how challenging his task was and to what degree is the subject abstract.

“Tramvestie is a unique project created by a very unique author. Pavel Novotný has worked on his poetic text for many years, and he has succeeded

in recasting it into a variety of forms. Consequently, I rather perceived Tramvestie as a conceptual work with the text, which is based on the conversations Pavel Novotný conducted with the passengers of tram No. 11 during the journey from Liberec to Jablonec and back. I also approached it as another evolutionary stage into which the work has metamorphosed. Bearing this in mind, I strove to respect the original text and all the other forms in which Tramvestie has so far appeared and continued to exist. Through the text and the original audio recording, we tried to visualise the individual characters, who project to us their subjective views of the landscape along the tram line. Instead of visually overloading the audience, I aimed to stimulate their imagination, while highlighting the musical component.”