During the first lockdown in the corona pandemic, Jan-Peter de Graaff composed a series of mini-opera’s, produced by Opera Zuid. They were directed by Kenza Koutchoukali and performed by various musicians and singers.

The word “Bon-sai” is a Japanese term which, literally translated, means “planted in a container”.

In this mini opera ‘Hands-free’, Amanda is trying to communicate through a text, that is being read out loud. The message consists of a series of emoticons.

We worked with the equipment we had at home at the time, since we weren’t able to meet anyone due to the corona virus. Our rehearsals with Jan-Peter and Kenza took place over Zoom and Skype and every time we finished a recording, we sent it to Jan-Peter so that he could give us his notes. The recordings were made with our own zoom-devices and laptopcamera’s and Zoey van der Heijden (editing) and Hans Erblich (sound) did a great job with the material we sent them. Would you like to see the rest of this mini opera-series? You can find them here, on YouTube.

Jan-Peter de Graaff

I feel like I need to devote a bit of my website to composer Jan-Peter de Graaff, since I had the honour to play a part in his very first opera: ‘All Rise!’ (also directed by Kenza), which he wrote for his Bachelor Exam. This happened to also be my very first solo role in an opera ever.

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