Ukrainian opera GAIA-24 wins Music Theatre Now award, recognized among top global projects, redefining opera through war, ecology, and innovation, with an international premiere circuit.
The Ukrainian production GAIA-24. Opera del Mondo by the Opera Aperta laboratory has become a laureate of the international Music Theatre Now (MTN) competition. The results of the competition were published on its official website, according to LB.ua.
An international jury selected the work of composers Roman Hryhoriv and Illia Razumeiko among the 7 most outstanding music theatre projects in the world from the 2023 – 2025 season.
The MTN jury described the opera as a work that views the stage as a “planetary landscape rather than a theatrical shell” and defined the performance as one that fundamentally rethinks the opera genre: “The resonance of GAIA-24 comes from the sense that it is not just an artistic work, but a cultural intervention. The performance shows how opera, once associated with imperial grandeur, can be reimagined as an urgent space of planetary consciousness.”
The jury also highlighted specific aspects of the opera, such as its expanded scenography, choreography, and dramaturgy. In addition, they were impressed by how musical theatre can address the reality of the surrounding war and landscapes: “This production expands the boundaries of musical theatre to a scale rarely attempted. This is not a work about ecology — it operates according to the laws of ecology. Structures here are born, collapse, intertwine, and transform. Voices merge with environmental sounds. Bodies interact with landscapes that are not metaphorical but rooted in the living reality of Ukraine, scarred by war.”
The jury of the Music Theatre Now competition included representatives of musical theatre and performative arts from four continents: Andrea Santorini, director of the largest opera house in South America, Theatro Municipal di São Paulo; Manuela Kerer, co-creative director of the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre; Gabrielle Martin, artistic director of the PuSH Festival in Vancouver; Lemi Ponifasio, a director and choreographer from Samoa/New Zealand; and Bronwyn Lace, director of The Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg.
“We are grateful to the jury for this recognition. Thanks to years of support from a number of European festivals, independent contemporary Ukrainian opera — created by Ukrainian artists from Ukrainian landscapes, stories, bodies, and voices — an opera that paradoxically is not needed in Ukraine, still remains relevant for the world and Europe, and continues to exist in our laboratory in Kyiv,” note the creators of the GAIA-24 project.
The Opera Aperta team is currently working on their next opera, Modraniht. Songs of Winter War, whose world premiere will take place on May 10 at the MCCM during the closing of the KЇ FEST festival.
About the Music Theatre Now competition:
- a global platform that every three years selects the most innovative and relevant projects in the field of contemporary music theatre;
- this time, the jury reviewed more than two hundred applications from all continents, highlighting works that expand the ethical and aesthetic horizons of art;
- the award ceremony for the winners will take place in May in Rotterdam;
- in 2021, the opera CHORNOBYLDORF by the Opera Aperta laboratory was included among the six best operas of the Music Theatre Now competition.
About the performance GAIA-24:
- work on GAIA-24. Opera del Mondo began after the Russian destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in 2023;
- video materials for the opera were filmed on Khortytsia Island in autumn 2023;
- the premiere took place in Kyiv in May 2024, after which the opera was presented at festivals in Rotterdam, Vienna, at the Venice Biennale in the Church of San Lorenzo, in Berlin, and in Zaporizhzhia;
- three members of the team whose work was important for creating the opera GAIA (producer Volodymyr Burkovets, sound engineers Andrii Nidzelskyi and Viacheslav Sobolev) have since joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
