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Sensual Ballet "Madame Bovary" by Valentina Turcu and the Warm Drama "The Beret" by Ilija Zovko for Valentine's Day at HNK Split

Sensual Ballet "Madame Bovary" by Valentina Turcu and the Warm Drama "The Beret" by Ilija Zovko for Valentine's Day at HNK Split

This year's Valentine's Day at the Croatian National Theatre Split will present two completely different performances that approach the same eternal theme of love from entirely different angles.

 

Sensual Ballet "Madame Bovary" by Valentina Turcu and the Warm Drama "The Beret" by Ilija Zovko for Valentine's Day at HNK Split

On Friday, February 14, at the intimate Scene 55, starting at 19:55, actors Snježana Sinovčić Šiškov and Trpimir Jurkić will perform "The Beret" by Ilija Zovko, which they co-directed. This warm, emotional, and superficially humorous drama revolves around the meeting of two ordinary, small people, capturing the audience's hearts since its premiere at the 66th Split Summer Festival.

On the main stage, starting at 20:00, the ballet performance "Madame Bovary" will take place. Following a successful premiere at the Split Prokurative during the 70th Split Summer Festival, this will be its first staging on the HNK Split stage. The esteemed and award-winning choreographer Valentina Turcu has choreographed, directed, dramatized, and musically conceptualized the performance. The protagonists include Irina Čaban Bilandžić as Emma Bovary, Tamás Darai as Emma's husband Charles, and Danil Podhruško, Sytze Jan Luske, and Eva Karpilovska. The premiere performance at the theatre is scheduled for February 14 at 20:00.

Emma Bovary, dissatisfied with the monotonous life of 19th-century French provinces, seeks love, excitement, and meaning through a series of love affairs that lead her to a fatal end, ruin, and suicide. "Experiencing the performance within the dark theatre space is undoubtedly more intimate and perhaps even emotionally sensitive, more sincere and pure. Performances on the open stage in the middle of summer are often accompanied by a euphoria of the senses, a different interaction, a kind of personal expression from the audience, who are revealed before everyone. It creates a kind of gladiatorial arena, while within the walls of the theatre, there is a safe space," says Valentina Turcu, a dance artist and choreographer whose creative work includes over 140 ballet, theatre, and opera productions. Turcu's ballets, performed worldwide, are described by critics as sensational emotional experiences with visionary ideas and a unique sensual poetry. Her theatrical sensibility is subtle, strong, fresh, innovative, surprising, intensely expressive, precise, unique, and highly aestheticized.

The musical collage of the performance features compositions by Frédéric Chopin, Philip Glass, and other composers chosen by Valentina Turcu herself. Alongside her, the production team includes set designer Marko Japelj, costume designer Alan Hranitelj, lighting designer Aleksandar Čavlek, video designer Martin Svobodnik, choreographer assistants Milka Hribar Bartolović, George Stanciu, Sytze Jan Luske, and Anton Bogov, ballet master Albina Rahmatullina, costume designer assistant Vesna Novitović, and sound designer Petar Ivanišević.

The cast, in addition to the previously mentioned Irina Čaban Bilandžić, Tamás Darai, Danil Podhruško, Sytze Jan Luske, and Eva Karpilovska, also includes Leonardo Souza, Ajla Yusupzhanova, Alfred Jago, Matea Milas, Igor Gluškov, Kristina Burić, Nikol Marčić, Daniel Jagar, Giulia Del Grande, Kaynan Pereira Oliveira, Ania Bartkowski, Robbie Fisher, Jelizaveta Nadenenko, Emanuele Sardo, Rimi Mizuoka, and Sviatoslav Kashchii.