A CONVERSATION WITH MUNDRUCZÓ AND WÉBER
A Simple Tragedy
Interview with Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber
Let’s begin with the beginning - how did everything start? KM Journey of hope was Aviel Cahn’s idea. He wanted to target the subject of migration and to do this he wanted to use the Swiss award-winning movie by Xavier Koller. He came to me because he knew I had already worked a lot on the subject of migration theme. Why he asked a filmmaker to adapt a film to the opera stage, that could be more the question. It could be pretty contradictory. I have to confess that I was quite skeptical about the idea but then after watching the movie, it touched me and I changed my mind. It is quite refreshing that the “refugee subject” is not affected by politics like it now is. In the movie, the story happens really on a human level and not as a mass phenomenon. That can be a very interesting
perspective for today: how can you tell a refugee story today? Then I asked Kata, the librettist, if she could imagine adapting a film into an opera, two genres that are so far from each other? On one hand, an almost documentary movie and on the other, a totally stylized world with “tableaux” and people singing. (laughs) KW The movie reminded me of a Greek tragedy: the story would be one of a father’s hubris. But is it really? Is Haydar battling against fate? Or is he obeying it? The material reminded me a lot of the stories of Greek tragedies like Medea, Elektra or even Prometheus. I thought I might reduce the whole story to the right characters. I had experience in writing plays and movies, so the question was, how could I write a libretto, what 37
