Second Love - première

Director Belle van Heerikhuizen (Orkater, Het Nationale Theater) makes her opera debut with the Dutch Travel Opera. She puts women and their voices at the center of this production.
 
The story 
In The Stronger, two women meet on Christmas Eve in a restaurant. Madame X, initially friendly, discovers that Madame Y may have had an affair with her husband. She realizes that this is the reason her husband chose the name Eskil for their son (the name of Madame Y's father). Therefore, her husband chose certain colors and dishes: those were Madame Y's favorites.  Madame X feels powerless and angry. Then she realizes that she is indeed the stronger of the two women because she did not abandon her husband. “Thank you for teaching my husband to love. Now I will go home to love him.” 
 
In Hagar, the story shifts to the kitchen of the same restaurant. Hagar tells chef and her secret lover Abram that she is pregnant with his child. Abram is delighted about his impending fatherhood but fears that his wife Sarai will find out. Sarai, who runs the restaurant as a business, learns about the pregnancy of waitress Hagar. She already knew about the affair between Hagar and her husband and secretly hoped for a child – Abram and she had sadly remained childless. Yet, Sarai now feels betrayed by her husband and by her friend Hagar.  
The restaurant also receives bad reviews after reopening, and the tension in the kitchen escalates – with dramatic consequences.  
  
Every story has two sides – composers Gerald Barry and Jan-Peter de Graaff explore love and betrayal from two different perspectives. The voiceless are given a voice.  
The Stronger, Barry's 2006 adaptation of Strindberg's monodrama, is an intense and thrilling 20-minute music theater piece. It is shaped as a conversation between two women: an opera singer and a silent actress. Silence is one of the themes of this opera.  

Dutch composer Jan-Peter de Graaff (1992) took on the challenge of giving the voiceless a voice. In Hagar, librettist Eleanor Barlow and composer de Graaff tell a modern story in which the characters and their musical journey give us the opportunity to reflect on our own complicated lives.