DARKO DJORDJEVIC 

He was born in Belgrade on 10th October, 1969. Since 1996 he has been a member of the opera ensemble of the National Theatre. Among other performances,  he  performed in the roles of Pepe

(Pagliacci), Tesla (Violet Fire), Dr. Blind (Die Fledermaus), Judas I, II, III, IV (Salome), Ruiz (Il Trovatore). Darko Djordjevic also performed the roles of Andreas, Cochenille, Pitichinaccio and Franz in Madlenianum production of The Tales of Hoffmann,  and the role of Goro in Madlenianum’s Madam Butterfly.

DANIELA DESSÌ, soprano

With a wide repertoire spanning more than seventy operas, Daniela Dessì is confirmed as one of the greatest sopranos on the current opera scene. Thanks to a remarkable international career, her performances and recordings are a reference for the whole repertoire of Verdi, Puccini and the whole Verismo repertoire. Born in Genoa, she graduated in singing and piano from the Conservatory “Arrigo Boito” in Parma, later specialising in chamber singing at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. In 1980 she won first prize at the Concorso Internazionale RAI “Auditorium”.

Since her debut with La serva padrona by Pergolesi, she started a great career: requested in the major theatres and festivals of the world, her repertoire ranges from Monteverdi to Prokofiev, without forgetting her great interpretations of Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte by Mozart, under the conduction of Riccardo Muti.

Daniela Dessì has a flawless technique and an extraordinary dramatic instinct, that brought her on the most important stages, collaborating with such authoritative conductors as Riccardo Muti, Claudio Abbado, James Levine, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Daniele Gatti, Zubin Mehta, Gianluigi Gelmetti, Bruno Campanella, Bruno Bartoletti, Nicolas Harnoncourt, Gustav Kuhn, Riccardo Chailly, Lorin Maazel, Carlos Kleiber; she has worked also with the most famous directors, including Franco Zeffirelli, Luca Ronconi, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Roberto De Simone, Giorgio Strehler. Among her recent greatest successes, it is worth mentioning the debut of Norma in Bologna (2008, for which she received the prestigious prize “Abbiati”), Andrea Chénier in Barcelona, Tosca in Florence (where she granted an encore of “Vissi d''''''''arte”, 52 years after the last encore by Renata Tebaldi), La fanciulla del West in Torre del Lago for the centenary of the work (2010), Aida in Tokyo, Andrea Chénier in Madrid, Tosca in New York and Genoa, I vespri siciliani in Parma, Madama Butterfly in San Francisco and Francesca da Rimini in Salerno. In 2011 she made her importart debut in La Gioconda by Amilcare Ponchielli at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, where this opera had not been performed for 41 years; she was also Desdemona in Otello and Leonora in Il trovatore in Liège with the tenor Fabio Armiliato, her partner in life and art (both operas were recorded for the label SoloVoce); she sang in Madama Butterfly in Vienna, and then in the duo recitals with Fabio Armiliato at the Tokyo Opera House City Hall / Takemitsu Memorial. The year 2011 ended with another important debut that will be soon a record product: the Vier letzte Lieder by Richard Strauss, for the Symphonic Season of Rome.

In 2012 she performed in Madama Butterfly at Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, in La Gioconda at the National Theatre in Mannheim, in Adriana Lecouvrer at the Gran Teatre de Liceu in Barcelona, with Fabio Armiliato. At the 55th edition of the Festival dei 2 Mondi in Spoleto she performed as protagonist of a recital entitled Novecento Italiano Rarities. She was also Tosca at the Herodion Theatre in Athens – a role for which she is internationally recognised as a reference singer – followed by a series of concerts in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in duo recitals with Fabio Armiliato.

After singing in two different productions of Madama Butterfly at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo and in Gozo, Malta, at the end of 2012 she gained a great success performing two outstanding debuts in the role of Pauline in Poliuto by Donizetti at the Théâtre National in Marseille, and in the title role in Turandot by Puccini at Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa. She started 2013 with Tosca at Staatsoper in Berlin, and in March she performed her recital Novecento Italiano Rarities at Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, followed by La forza del destino in Liège with Fabio Armiliato. Upcoming engagements include Aida at Arena in Verona and another important debut in the role of Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana at Taormina Festival.

Daniela Dessì is credited with a very large discography. Her passion for singing has allowed her to dedicate part of her time to teaching. She has also starred in several television programs devoted to the popularization of opera. She has received many awards including the prestigious prize “Abbiati” in 2008, the prize “Giacomo Puccini”, Torre del Lago (2011), prize “Zenatello” Arena di Verona in 2000. In 2011 she received the prestigious prize “Belcanto Rodolfo Celletti” in Martina Franca as “absolute soprano”.

CHRISTIAN ATTERSSE, scenographer

Born in Bratislava (Pressburg at that time) in 1940. Painter, musician and writer, he studied the applied arts at the University in Vienna. Since 1966 he has had close contacts with the «Viennese Actionism». He was close to the «object art» and the «action art» in which he created the works integrating music, speech and other media in a new way.

It is quite understandable that drawing and painting has become central preoccupation of his artistic expression. He was especially interested in erotic subjects and in expressing experiences with nature. 

The characteristic of Attersee’s paintings is that they are mostly made in acrylic paints, in  «figural-symbolic style», in light tones, with expressive dynamic movements.
When setting his exhibitions, he organizes performances with music and literature. In 1984 he was representing Austria at the «Venezia Bienale». Since 1992 he has been the professor at the Vienna University – at the Faculty of Applied Arts and belongs to the circle of the most recognized Austrian artists.

In the season 1989/1990 the first Attersee’s retrospective exhibition was organized in the Contemporary Art Museum in Belgrade, and this year Attersee will present himself to the audience of Madlenianum in a double role: as a painter, by his exhibition in Bel Etage and as scenographer in Renato Zanella’s ballet Wolfgang Amadé.

BOJANA NIKITOVIC, costume designer 

She was born in Belgrade on 25th May, 1965. She graduated from the Faculty of Applied Arts in 1989. She made more than hundred theatrical costumes. Her most significant performances are: Crime and Punishment, King Ibi, Kir Janja, The Twelfth Night, False Emperor Scepan Mali, Filumena Marturano, Koštana, Troilus and Cresida, Kiss of The Spider Woman, Idiot, An Enemy of the People, Imaginary Patient and many others. As the designer of costumes in the theatre, she was granted three Sterija Awards (in 1993, in 1994 and in 2002).   Bojana Nikitovic made the costumes for the operas: Rigoletto and the Power of Destiny, and for the ballets Mayerling and Romeo and Juliet. As the film costume designer, she was engaged in more than ten projects, mostly for Italian producers, and as the first assistant of the costume designer Milena Canonero, she was the co-winner of Oscar for the Best Costume Design in Sofia Coppola’s film about Marie Antoinette. Bojana Nikitovic was pronounced the best costume designer by the Magazin Stage in the years 1997, 1998 and 1999. She was also granted the prize of YUSTAT for the year 1997, and the three awards of the Yugoslav Association of Applied Arts Artists and Designers 

Aleksandar Nikolic, born in 1983, has studied Theatre and Radio Direction in the class of PhD Ivana Vujic at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, History of Art at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, as well as Industrial Design at the College of Professional Studies Belgrade Polytechnic. He has had professional trainings in Hanover, in Germany and in Brescia, in Italy.

Since the season 2009/2010 he has been engaged in the Opera of the National Theatre in Belgrade on maintaining and renewing the current repertoire: The Marriage of Figaro by Jagos Markovic, Carmen by Nebojsa Bradic, The Love for Three Oranges by Jiri Menzel, Lucia di Lamermur by John Ramster, Adriana Lecouvreur by Radoslav Zlatan Doric… 

Among the selected projects of Aleksandar Nikolic are: Christmas Journey (Opera of the National Theatre, Belgrade), Istar- the world premiere of the works by Ivan Brkljacic (Danube Fest, Belgrade Fortress), Dear Mom (JDT and AA, Belgrade), Le Chat botte by Charles Perrault (Pavilion Veljkovic), The Lilly in the Valley or Jakob Apfelböck Bertolda Brechta (TIBA Festival, Belgrade), Stories my grandmother told me (KC Pavilion, Hanover, Germany), Dedications and Premieres - Collegium musicum (The National Museum, Beograd), Europe (UN)limited (KC Pavilion, Hanover, Germany), Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (The Museum of Applied Art, Belgrade). 

On the invitation of the representatives of ELIA (The European League of Institutes of the Arts) and selected by the University of Arts in Belgrade, Aleksandar Nikolic represented Serbia at the pan-European Festival NEU/Now in 2009 with the play Woyzeck by Georg Buchner. 

ALEKSANDAR ILIC
Choreographer

Since his earliest youth Aleksandar Ilic has committed to artistic vocation, thus after finishing Primary School he enrolled Secondary Musical School “Isidor Bajic” in novi Sad and several years later Ballet High School “Lujo Davico” in Belgrade as well.

During attending High School, in 1998 Aleksandar Ilic started his ballet career in the National Theatre in Belgrade, soon being engaged as the member of the ensemble. After a series of solo roles, ballet of the National Theatre promoted him and engaged to be the first soloist in 2005. He has interpreted the whole repertoire from classic and neoclassic to contemporary ballet and in 2003 the National Theatre in Belgrade paid tribute to his work and contribution. He is the prizewinner of two Dimitrije Parlic awards for interpretation in performances “Who Is Singing Out There, by Stasa Zurovac and Six Dances by Jiri Kylian, as well as of the City of Belgrade Award.

As a choreographer he made his debut in 1999 at the Festival of Choreographic Miniatures and slowly changed his direction to choreographic work, researching different movements and ways of expression. Since then his choreographies have been shown in Serbia and the region. During his career he has cooperated with Lidia Pilipenko, Stasa Zurovac, Dietmar Seyferth, Marie-Claude Pietragalla, Jiri Kylian, Paul Lightfoot and Renato Zanella who each in their own way influenced his further development as a choreographer. In 2009 on the Large Stage of the National Theatre in Belgrade he premiered the ballet Viva la Vida!!! A year later, in cooperation with Maja Volk and Belgrade Fadists, he premiered his second ballet on the stage of the National Theatre in Belgrade- Lisbon Story, which he signed as the choreographer and director. In BITEF Theatre production, using his choreographic miniatures, he shaped the first performance for Mila and Pets Fund, having been performed in May 2010. In September 2011 he set the ballet “Celebrating of Love” by Teodora Sujic on the Large Stage of Madlenianum. In 2011 he enrolled Master Studies at Trinity-Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. Among a few world acknowledged artists and scientific-research workers there, he is preparing his new performance inspired by fairy-tales, which is to open reconstructed Stage “Rasa Plaovic” of the National Theatre in Belgrade in spring 2012. He is the author of the book “Holiday of the Heart” (1999-2010). He graduated in communicology. 

Aleksandar Denic, set designer, the author of a large number of theatre and film set designes both in this country and abroad. He worked with a number of famous domestic and foreign directors such as Arnold Barkus, Michael Basset, Srdjan Dragojevic, Uli Edel, Srdjan Karanovic, Emir Kusturica, Tanja Mandic Rigonat, Dragan Marinkovic, Goran Markovic, Darjan Mihajlovic, Dejan Mijac, Mikele Merola, Stefan Sablic, Branislav Micunovic, Jug Radivojevic, Miloš Radovic, Michael Rouds, Slavenko Saletovic, Alisa Stojanovic, John Skovel, Gorcin Stojanovic, Radmila Vojvodic and others. He directed stage cantata Atlas by Anja Djordjevic in Yugoslav Drama Theatre. Among numerous acknowledgements and awards, he won Great Award of Serbia, nomination for Ammy Award, Golden Knight, Crystal Prism, Golden Mimosa and Golden Turkey, are outstanding.

return to drama The bereaved family

Branislav Nusic passed away in his home on the day of Epiphany, 19th January 1938. Although it was well known that the greatest Serbian comediographer had already been ill for a long time, the news of death surprised everyone. Nušic’s funeral was one of the most noteworthy public events in the cultural life of the capital between the two world wars. Nusic’s body was laid on a catafalque in the foyer of the National Theatre on 21st January, and the funeral was on 22nd January. Here are some of the statements that famous Nušic’s contemporaries made on the day of the funeral.

„Nusic has unforged in his comedy a precious metal for small coins, small and numerous, intended for many. Recognized and unrecognized by critics, and admitted to the Academy only at the age of seventy, Nusic was finally acknowledged not only as the most active name, but also as a necessity of the time. One of the satisfactions for Nušic should be the feeling of voidness after his death; voidness and care at the theatre, to which he injected camphor year after year.“                                                         

Milan Grol 

„The reason for our citizens, for so many small people, to assemble around the coffin of Branislav Nusic, around the dead body of the writer of comedies, jokes, a creator of caricatures, a cheerful writer, an entertainer, to form a long and voluntary guard around his funeral, from the centre of the city to the distant cemetery – was not an ordinary curiosity of common people for solemn processions, or a wish to take part in a public act, or an attraction of a famous name, or even something that we could call ’thankfulness to laughter’... The true reason that summoned those long rows of Nusic’s fellow-citizens to the streets along which his dead body was carried was a different interpretation, a different meaning that Nusic’s laughter must have and had acquired at the same time when his life ended.“ 

Milan Predic 

„Nusic was my parent. The parent of my repertoire. He has created me the way I am now, by the roles he has written for me. He was a great man, so great that for a long, long time from now on there will be no one to match him... Nusic has meant a huge deal for us, actors. We have loved him as a father and have cherished him as a child. He has worried about us as a father, has taken care to give us the best roles, and we, in return, have cherished and protected him. Nusic has left us today. But as long as theatre and actors exist, Nusic will be famous and among us he will always be alive.“ 

Zanka Stokic

return to drama The bereaved family

The Bereaved Family (1934) is an extremely interesting comedy on a „bereaved“ group of people who expect an inheritance and have already started dividing the fortune that they have not got. In this work of comedy-writing terms the writer gave a gallery of characters of small minds who competed in lies and cynicism – headed by the masterly realized character of Agaton, who was the most dynamic personality among them, which meant with the most plastic features of hypocrisy and the lack of scruples, which a small but cunning mind could possibly have. Just in this Nusic’s comedy the dramatic and theatrical „imminent present time“ had its full effect, construed from simpler to more complex forms of sensual-concrete presentation. Namely, a group of people scatters as a group, persons individualize, enabling the character of Agaton to dominate ever more in a comical way, so that from a typical character of a certain social stratum and the said group he grows into a character who transforms and adjusts so cunningly that he loses the measures of his cunning mind and even himself is shocked with the exaggeration of his last combination! Our playwright masterly realized the dramaturgy of this comical play.

Verbal comics dominate in the first act. The second act has primarily been realized by situation comics, which reveal a gallery of characters and single out Agaton, who struggles to become „a leader“ of the bereaved family. The end of the second act is the pinnacle of that comics, since, paradoxically, individual interests lead the characters to a group, „family“ quarrel, in which words, as elements of hypocrisy and signs of interests, are reduced to the level of mere shouts. Finally, the third act begins with a revelation that the deceased has deceived them all: it would seem the group is united, but every individual has already taken and is taking off his face a mask, the mask of „the bereaved family“. Relatively calmly, with resignation, with bitter and vindictive, even sarcastic, words addressed to the deceased, every one of them reveals his/her real, morally corrupt face. Only Agaton tries to find new ways for his Proteus being, desiring to obtain inheritance, money and estate. Verbal and situation comics are now subordinated to the comics of character of Agaton’s person, of the group and the society. Traditional moral balance achieved by introduction of positive versus negative characters – a poor girl, the deceased’s illegitimate daughter, and a young lawyer, as a contrast to the group and Agaton – has not significantly disturbed this comical play. Fortunately, these positive persons are not meant to be in the comedy to lecture, or to show some ideal beings, but also to suffer them, to some extent, the sensuality of comical play. Traces of cruel life and shadows of tragic are lost in a vertiginous burlesque play, in humorous and lucidly ironic, even satirical relations and connotations, in cascades of thunderous laughter behind which is a vigorous well of critical, comic ethos.

return to drama The bereaved family

Branislav Nusic was born on 8th October in 1864 in Belgrade as Alkibijad Nusa, to a Cincar merchant’s family, of the father corce and mother Ljubica. The family soon moved to Smederevo, where Nusic finished his elementary school and the first two years of the boarding school, but he graduated in Belgrade in 1882. When he was eighteen, he officially changed his name into Branislav Nušic and under that name he graduated from the Belgrade Law School in in 1884.

At the age of nineteen, in 1883, Nusic wrote his first comedy, Parliamentarian, which was commended and supported by the most eminent writers, but nevertheless remained in his desk drawer for thirteen years, and was not staged, because Aleksandar Obrenovic, the ruling prince, did not like it and claimed that it was „a mockery of the defenders of parliamentarism“. But Nusic continues to write and participates in turbulent historical events at the end of 19th century. In 1885 he completed his regular military service and, as a member of a regular military unit, took part in the Serbian-Bulgarian War. Revolted by the fact that none of the state officials was at the funeral of Mihailo Katanic, a hero from the Serbian-Bulgarian War, he wrote a satirical poem, Two Slaves (Dva raba), for the opposition newspaper of the time, Daily Newspaper, and for that he was sentenced to two years of prison. In the prison he wrote the comedy Protection. How did he get a permission to writec Nusic knew that the prison superintendent read his mail and therefore started to “write” letters to his cousin, a state minister. Thanks to his quick wit, he acquired a privileged treatment for himself and – a right to write.

When he left the prison – as if being one of his heroes – Nušic was awarded nothing less than a position of a consul, a service that he would perform for some ten years and during which he would stay in Bitola (where he married), Serez, Thessalonica, Skopje and Pristina. In 1900, Nusic was appointed a secretary to the Ministry of Education, and soon thereafter he became a head dramaturg of the National Theatre in Belgrade. In 1904, he was appointed the manager of the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, but left this position a year later and moved to Belgrade, where he became active in journalism. He started to write under the pseudonym „Ben Akiba“.

He returned to Macedonia in 1912. First he lived in Bitola, then in Skopje, where he founded a theatre in 1913. During the First World War, Nusic retreated with the Serbian army all the way through Albania, and then recovered in Italy, Switzerland and France. In this world war, Nusic suffered the greatest family tragedy. His only son, Ban, was first heavily wounded, and when his wounds healed, he returned to the trench and got killed. Nusic never really got over his loss, and showed his feelings in his prose work The Nine-hundred-fifteenth – a tragedy of a nation. However, Nusic would not have been Nusic, if there were no anecdotes related to his sufferings in the First World War. When he saw that he had to retreat with the Serbian army, Nusic made a selection and threw away a number of his unfinished manuscripts and notes, and took with himself all the works that were finished, or sketched in details,. All the way to Pristina, where the retreat was by railway, he carried with himself the manuscripts of almost fifteen kilograms weight. But, since the retreat from Pristina to Prizren required walking, he was forced to make a new selection. The Suspect was among the rejected manuscripts. The drama was left with an Albanian who gave Nušic his word of honour („besa“) to safeguard the text. Although the Bulgarians attacked Pristina during the war and burned everything, even all Nusic’s possessions, the Albanian kept his „besa“ and the text of The Suspect was saved.

After the First World War, Nusic was appointed the first head of the Art Department of the Ministry of Education. He remained at this position till 1923. Thereafter he became the manager of the National Theatre in Sarajevo, to return to Belgrade in 1927. In the last decade of his life, Branislav Nusic became an opponent again, and, as a member of the National Front, he spoke publicly against fascism. He was elected a full member of the Serbian Royal Academy on 10th February 1933. He died in Belgrade on 19th January 1938.