Shakesonnets

Cankarjev dom

Première: 30. 3. 2016, Cankarjev dom
Running time 50 minutes. No interval.

Scenarist and dramaturg Primož Vitez
Composer Mitja Vrhovnik Smrekar

Cast
Bossa de Novo, Boris Cavazza, Urška Taufer

William Shakespeare wrote 37 theatre plays. He wrote tragedies: Hamlet, Richard II, Richard III. He wrote comedies: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, All’s Well That Ends Well … Twelfth Night, or What You Will. He wrote poetry and he wrote sonnets. 154 of them. They were translated for the first time into Slovenian by the poet Janez Menart. Almost 50 years later, they were translated – in a different manner – by Srečko Fišer. Here we feature 11 of them, translated into music by Mitja Vrhovnik Smrekar. One of them, by the number of 130, became a folk tune and goes No, her eyes are nothing like velvet, will be performed six times. Once in the original English, once in Portuguese, once in Italian and three times in Slovenian. Six pieces of one poem. William Shakespeare’s sonnets are variations on the subject of love. Love of all kinds, this or that, for let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.

Photo: Nada Žgank

Photo: Peter Uhan

Photo: Nada Žgank

Photo: Nada Žgank