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Spinoza

Spinoza is a bold and moving musical by NITE and Club Guy & Roni, in collaboration with HIIIT and Het Muziek. It tells the story of a brother and two sisters — Bento, Rebecca, and Miriam — growing up in the Portuguese-Jewish refugee community of 17th-century Amsterdam.

Bento is a free thinker. He dares to radically question God, faith, and tradition. He asks questions — too sharp, too free. Rebecca chooses safety within the community, choosing to belong. Miriam longs for a freedom that does not exist for her, simply because she is a woman. While the children begin with a close bond, they gradually grow apart and distance emerges between them. Love becomes forbidden. Ideas become dangerous. And tolerance suddenly proves to be a fragile and elastic concept.

Spinoza is a deeply human story in the form of a musical about love, conviction, and the courage to think differently. It shows that a society cannot exist with only one voice. We need the thinkers who dare to question everything. We need people who remind us where we come from. And we need bridge-builders: people who connect, who bring opposing sides together, especially when differences run deep. Only together do we remain human. Only together do we remain free.

Geweld & Vibrato

An operatic performance for singing actor and soprano,
3 percussionists, 3 strings, live electronics, radio and insect sounds.

Composer Huba de Graaff found in her parents’ estate letters and photographs of her maternal uncle who fought in Indonesia for the Dutch army. In sharp contrast are all the documents she found from her paternal Indo grandfather. He appeared to have been friends with members of the Indonesian anti-colonial resistance. She is the living product of two families, embodying the two sides of this colonial war.

A Dutch soldier conducts a small orchestra in the interior of Indonesia. The music-making “natives” don’t really cooperate, and gradually, more and more annoying insects appear. Whipped up by the historic speeches of General Spoor and Prime Minister Beel, the whole thing escalates into an outburst of transgressive vibrato and theatrical violence.

An unorthodox opera, in which the phenomenon of “vibrato” is used as a metaphor for the violence of Western expansionism: overwhelming and forced transgressive vibrato.