Station Paradiso

Which sounds evoke feelings of home in us? What music do we associate with the places where we have lived our lives? Can a rummaged-out LP sleeve, a cassette box, an aging CD bring memories to life across countries and generations? With questions like these in mind, Croatian composer Sara Glojnarić launched a "sound archive of the future" two years ago as a collection of material for her compositions. In personal conversations and listening sessions with people who have settled in the Stuttgart area since the 1950s, she has since uncovered long-forgotten memories and created an intergenerational songbook of the city. In a team with Bosnian writer Tanja Šljivar and director Anika Rutkofsky, Glojnarić weaves these immigration stories full of nostalgia and dreams, tragedies and comedy, rituals and linguistic diversity into a poetic and surreal mixtape opera. An opera about Stuttgart and from Stuttgart, composed for the Staatsorchester and ensemble of the Staatsoper, including Goran Jurić and Diana Haller, whose personal musical memories of the journey to Stuttgart will be experienced as flashbacks on stage.

Libretto by Tanja Šljivar (research and collaboration: Mina Miloševi) based on interviews by Sara Glojnarić with Sara Alterio, Ivana Andjelic, Marijan Bernardić, Davide Durante, Goran Jurić, Sezen Kaçar, Milenko Moćiljanin, Sophia Sadzakov, Sara Tomšić
Translation by Mascha Dabić

by Sara Glojnarić