Project Butterfly: Boosting environmental awareness in opera creation - Call for composers

With this Call for Composition Proposals, the Butterfly Project intends to identify and select three composers, to write a three acts opera, in Italian, Polish and Finnish, dedicated to the theme of environmental sustainability. The opera is to be commissioned by Teatro Comunale di Modena (Italy), Opera Bałtycka, (Gdansk, Poland) and Opera Box (Helsinki, Finland). 

The opera created within PROJECT BUTTERFLY will combine three acts of thirty minutes each (one for each country), made up of three stories dedicated to an environmental theme: water, earth and air. The co-production will involve three composers, one from each project partner’s opera house. 

The conception of the work will begin with a co-creation phase implemented by high school students in three partners’ countries - Italy, Poland and Finland. The selected authors of the opera will work hand-in-hand with the creative team and the artistic directors of the project within two artistic residencies in Italy and Poland. Finally, after two years of work, the project will culminate, in May 2025, in the premiere of the newly created opera in the partner theatres and online. The final production will strongly rely on advanced digital technologies and showcase the pathways for a more sustainable opera production. 

The opera will be written after 2 co-creation cycle of webinars with high school students. The first cycle of webinars will help students to find a subject for the opera: environment Agencies and experts in every city of each theatre partner will provide knowledge to the students helping to find subjects suitable for writing a story. The second cycle of webinars will guide the students into the creative writing of a story. The literary author (lyricist) from each theatre will help each group of students to turn its subject into a story suitable for an opera libretto. The opera lyricists will turn the story into a libretto.