Company + No. 61 (David)

**23 June 18:30 – *Company***
Musical theatre in seven scenes (season 2025–26).

"I close my eyes to see"

Company is an instrumental-theatrical work inspired by the novella of the same name by Samuel Beckett. A composition for two percussionists, a singer, and electronics unfolds through unstable relationships between its protagonists – voices appear, repeat, contradict each other, and disappear. Reality and fiction blur; memories, fragmented consciousness, loneliness, and the need for company hover in the space between sound, movement, and silence.

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**23 June 20:00 – *No. 61 (David)***
One-act opera, world premiere, 35' (season 2025–26).

Secret notes on a fading mind.

Composer Richard Ayres writes about the work: "David, my father, suffers from dementia. He often sits by the window and gazes into the distance for hours. Yet it is not a detached gaze – his eyes flicker and his facial expression constantly changes, as if he were watching some intense 'inner film'. When I ask him what he was thinking about, he usually answers apologetically: 'I don't remember.'"

In his opera, he captured possible inner dialogues and shared experiences from the past that grew in his imagination into concrete images: air as a determining force for tiny flying insects; stars reflected on the surface of a lake; birds transforming a tree into a colourful aviary (in reality just autumn leaves); a train disappearing into a forested valley and carrying David's mother away.