麻豆社

沤ygimantas Kudirka is Lithuania鈥檚 leading spoken-word artist and agent provocateur. A prolific writer and creative artist, he has won Europe鈥檚 Best Slam Poet as well as multiple hip-hop awards, blending satire and social critique with dystopian and futurist themes. 沤ygimantas, who goes by the alias MC Messiah, is shaking up the scene with a new libretto for the opera Brave New Body, teaming up with avant-garde composer Arturas Bum拧teinas. Kudirka鈥檚 texts play with the idea of the human body as a machine, not without his trademark satire, and sets them to the sutartin臈, an ancient polyphonic form found in Lithuania which has Unesco status. Is it possible to combine centuries-old traditional music with hyper-modern dystopian themes? We sit in on rehearsals with the Lietuva Song and Dance Ensemble leading up to the opera鈥檚 premiere, commissioned by the Operomanija festival in Vilnius.