Emmanuel Sikora conducting the Ukrainian Festival Orchestra
Emmanuel Sikora, 30, has just composed two short operas: Angelica, inspired by Puccini’s Suor Angelica, and The Miracle of Saint Jude, about King Arthur and the knights of the round table. Sikora has composed the librettos as well as the music for these operas, which together last about 15 minutes. Both works call on the resources of a standard opera company, with an orchestra of 50, a small chorus, and two soloists.
Ivan Ostapovych, conductor of the Ukrainian Festival Orchestra, has reached out to Sikora about premiering these operas in concert at the L’viv Organ Hall. Ostapovych and Sikora have already collaborated on a number of projects in the Ukrainian city, and while the composer is unable to travel to Ukraine himself, he feels his work to be in more than capable hands. “Ostapovych is a solid conductor, who thinks in terms of lines rather than colors”, Sikora says. “His interpretations are always fluid and elegant.”
Ukrainian conductor Ivan Ostapovych
Ostapovych is currently recruiting three of L’viv’s finest opera singers to fill the roles of Angelica’s title character, a mezzo, her father, a baritone, who will also perform the role of Kinng Arthur in The Miracle, and a tenor, to portray Arthur’s former friend and now sworn enemy, Barnabas. The concert premiere and studio recording of these operas has been scheduled for August. “I am grateful to have penned these operas as I wish,” Sikora says, “and to have them performed by colleagues I have come to regard as friends.”
Sikora last worked with Ostapovych and the Ukrainian Festival Orchestra in August 2021, when he conducted the premiere of his Preludio Sinfonico at the Organ Hall, alongside a program conducted by Ostapovych. “I’ve heard them play many times,” Sikora says, “but working with them on stage I became poignantly aware of their high caliber, and of my own weaknesses and strengths as a conductor.”
The orchestra’s caliber is vital to the realization of Sikora’s newest operas, which rely on the orchestra as much as the voices to tell the stories. “For the premiere,” Sikora says, “the Ukrainian Festival Orchestra is not only suitable, but ideal. I consider them one of Eastern Europe’s great orchestras.”
Scenes from ‘The Miracle of Saint Jude’ as imagined by Argentinian illustrator Marcelo Benitez
YouTube channel – Emmanuel Sikora
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