Name
Andrii Koshman / Nova Opera
Current location
Athens, Greece
Professional field
Contemporary opera, site-specific music theatre performances
The story behind
Andrii Koshman is the head of Nova Opera, a group of Ukrainian artists aiming to find new ways of developing music for the theatre. They are involved in creation of the new synthetic genres and experiment with untypical music and stage performances.
In April 2022, Andrii together with his colleagues was forced to leave Ukraine and relocated to Greece.
Through their eyes
“Thanks to the Ukrainian artists and creatives grant and support program, this summer I took part in the Lotte Lehmann Summer Opera Academy in Perleberg, Germany. It is an intimate and intensive summer program preparing opera singers for professional work in the world of opera. During that time I took voice lessons and master classes, worked with coaches, pianists and directors, while also attended language coaching and german lessons. I set up a recording studio in Athens at BIOS/Romantso which was also provided by the program and made recordings of works by modern Ukrainian composers for baritone, cello and piano. Also, in September with soloists of Nova Opera, we made a live-stream performance for Fade Radio in Athens. On September 28 with the cellist Zhanna Marchinska we are taking part in the Insieme Festival in Rome with Danish-Ukrainian pianist Elisabeth Neilsen. Now we are working closely on the creation of a new project, within the framework of which a documentary film will be shot about the creation of our next opera. The first shootings have already been completed. The estimated dates for the premiere of our project is around February-March 2023, in Athens.”
More about Andrii Koshman and Nova Opera
Since 2014 NOVA OPERA created and staged numerous productions: opera-requiem “IYOV” (based on the Book of Job), overnight opera “UnSimple” (based on the novel of Taras Prohasko), opera-circus “BABYLON”, in which circus artists take part, opera-ballet “ARK”, trap-opera “Wozzeck” (collaboration with Ukrainian poet Yurii Izdryk), drama per musica “Hamlet” (collaboration with Ivano-Frankivsk Music and Drama Theatre), futuristic opera “AEROPHONIA”, opera-dystopia “GAZ”(collaboration with Yara Arts Group, director Virlana Tkacz, choreographer Simon Mayer), PhD-opera “What is Zarathustra silent on”(libretto based on the philosophical novel by Friedrich Nietzsche “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”). In February, 2021 Re:post-opera “LE” (based on the poetry of Lesya Ukrainka) was presented in Kyiv. The first production of NOVA OPERA was improvisation opera “Coriolanus” based on the tragedy by William Shakespeare.
According to Music Theatre NOW competition in 2018 opera-requiem “IYOV” became one of TOP-10 contemporary operas among 436 participants from 55 countries. It was performed in Paris (France), Copenhagen (Denmark), at The V Festival of Traditional and Avant-garde Music CODES (Lublin, Poland), The Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre, Musikverein (Vienna, Austria), May Opera Evenings Festival (Skopje, Macedonia), PROTOTYPE opera festival in New York and Operadagen Rotterdam.
Ukrainian Artists & Creatives Support Program
As the Ukrainian crisis is upon us and a large number of CCIs have already been affected by it, there is a constant need to support displaced Ukrainian creatives looking to resume their professional activities in new conditions. During the Program implementation Ukrainian CCS professionals received assistance in finding new jobs, accommodation possibilities, art residencies and were hosted in the creative hubs of ECHN around Europe, blending into local creative communities, aiming at their integration. 27 of the applicants were provided with a grant of 1.000€ in order to contribute to their resilience and help them resettle in a new environment. Beneficiaries of the Program shared their stories, describing professional successes and challenges and how this project has helped them get back on their feet.