In 2025, the Holland Festival will present the world premiere of Otemba - Daring Women, the music theatre performance by composer Misato Mochizuki, librettist Janine Brogt and director Jan van den Berg with lead roles for soloists Ryoko Aoki and Bernadeta Astari. The play is based on the painting Portrait of Pieter Cnoll, Cornelia van Nijenrode, their daughters and two enslaved servants (Batavia, 1665) by Jacob Coeman, which is on view in the Rijksmuseum. Otemba - Daring Women highlights the colonial history of the Netherlands but also the international character of the city of Amsterdam by showing different, sometimes divergent, perspectives of both the characters, and the international makers. In her music, Mochizuki (Tokyo, 1969) connects elements from different musical traditions from Japan and the West.
Otemba - Daring Women will have its world premiere at the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam on 19 June. Ticket sales start on 28 November 2024.
‘Otemba’ is not only the title of the show, but also one of more than a hundred and sixty words that Japanese has borrowed from Dutch. It means ‘untamable’; and is used specifically for independent (rebellious) girls and women who do not submit and go their own way.
Otemba - Daring Women was inspired by the remarkable life story of the woman depicted on the canvas. Cornelia van Nijenroode was the daughter of Japanese woman Surishira and Cornelis van Nijenroode, a Dutch merchant in Hirado, the first VOC trading post in Japan. Cornelia married Pieter Cnoll, a wealthy chief merchant from Batavia, at the age of 23. Four years after Pieter Cnoll's death, Cornelia remarried Joan Bitter, a disastrous decision as Bitter was mainly interested in Cornelia's money. The marriage deteriorated rapidly and irreparably. Cornelia, very unusually at the time, filed for divorce. Up to the Supreme Court, she litigated for her rights in the first Dutch divorce case in which a woman claimed legal capacity over her own assets.
Remarkably, the painting also depicts the later Indonesian freedom fighter Untung Surapati. The Republic of Indonesia has honoured him as a national hero since 1975, 30 years after the declaration of the Republika Indonesia.
In Otemba - Daring Women, Cornelia van Nijenroode steps out of her frame and time, into the 21st century and another continent. There she meets Kirana Diah, the Indonesian restorer working on the canvas. Kirana is initially interested in the painting because of Untung Surapati. But then Cornelia challenges her to a nightly conversation about female indomitability, their view of themselves and the other, about decolonization and self-determination. Because how do you look at each other's cultural realities across the centuries? It is a magical moment in the restoration process, a one-off nocturnal encounter across the limitations of time and space; between painting and reality, between then and now, between East and West.
The encounter produces a confrontation between the characters and their life histories that are radically different from each other, but also have surprising similarities. Also present at the conversation is a scanning robot, artificial intelligence that should be present as a neutral data analyst, but also turns out to have a voice of its own.
The performance will premiere at the Muziekgebouw during the 78th Holland Festival on 19 June 2025 and will tour nationally and internationally at a later stage. The full Holland Festival programme will be announced in March 2025.
Credits:
Composition: Misato Mochizuki (J) works on three continents and has some 60 compositions to her name, combining Western and Japanese tradition in her own unique way.
Libretto: Janine Brogt (NL) is a playwright, dramaturge, librettist and translator for theatre, opera and dance. Her versatile oeuvre often revolves around exceptional women.
Ensemble: Founded in 2009, New European Ensemble (EU) often combines music with film, dance, theatre and visual arts. Preferably, the ensemble uses the communicative power of music to tell stories that challenge, inspire and deepen our understanding of human experience and our environment.
Artistic direction & direction: Jan van den Berg (NL) works as a film and theatre maker at the intersection of science and performing arts. He is founder and artistic director of Theatre Adhoc.
Cast:
Cornelia van Nijenroode: Ryoko Aoki (J) holds a unique position as a Noh singer in an originally strictly male tradition. Above all, she is the pioneer of and inspiration for a new artistic form that combines utai - traditional Noh recitation - with contemporary music.
Kirana Diah: Bernadeta Astari (ID/NL) is a vocal artist with an expressive voice. During her training, she won the Dutch Classical Talent Award and the Prinses Christina Concours. In 2012, she graduated cum laude from the Utrecht Conservatory of Music.
Scanning Robot: TBD
Light: Gé Wegman was co-founder and permanent lighting designer of the Veem Theater, the production house for mime and movement theatre. As an independent lighting designer, he works with a diversity of Dutch directors, companies and workshops.
Costumes: Lisa Konno is an outspoken, interdisciplinary artist and designer from Amsterdam. In 2018, she won the Dutch Design Award.