Out At S.E.A. (Someone Eats All)

Sławomir Mrożek’s absurd one-act play titled Out at Sea inspired the idea to provide an opportunity for young composers to jointly create an opera that unites and addresses the predominant phenomena of the modern age (like alienation, abuse of power, conformity and boundaries of freedom) in one grotesque situation, where the problem of the part and the whole is reflected in the opportunities offered by form and technique.

The joint work Out at S.E.A., managed by Péter Eötvös, Luca Francesconi, Balázs Horváth and András Almási-Tóth, is a collective work bearing the musical signature of each composer.

“Three people, abandoned, on no-man’s land, on the open sea, in the world of the media. The participants of a reality show, their situation is that of modern man, lonely in community; depending on each other, they would devour each other; they are selfish and without emotions, acting for show, as if someone was always watching them and evaluating their performance. Three protagonists, three different worlds… the topic of... Mrożek’s one-act Out at S.E.A. appears in a totally new context: within the well-known claustrophobic, yet public framework of reality shows, in the form of an opera. In addition, the story can be seen twice, the two identical, yet different variations reflect on one another, leaving the feeling of eternity, repeatability, and substitutability in the audience. The three protagonists think they are exceptional characters, yet they are only mass products on the metaphysical media market: tomorrow others will come and the same will happen to them…”
András Almási-Tóth

Flagey, La Monnaie, Ulysses, Budapest Music Center, Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation, with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union