Four Nights of Dream crowns The Vadstena Academy season 2008

A very successful series of performances has come to an end. Four Nights of Dream, Vadstena Academy's biggest success ever was played on the 3rd of August or the last time this summer. Moto Osada's opera premiered on the 19th of July and has been sold out ever since. In a ghostdance at Vadstena Castle we find a meditating samurai and Asian rhythms. This is Moto Osada's newly written dream-opera. Here we meet the unknown – what we see when we open up to our inner selves. In a Japanese dream-landscape, people's fears and desires are portrayed. Nils Spangenberg directed this international first performance that was both beautiful and primitive, comical and horrible, Japanese and European. The opera consists of four dreams: One is mystical, one is funny, sexual and grotesque, one is a nightmare, and the final one is a beautiful dream about death. "In the world of dreams, the natural laws do not rule, and the tyranny of time and space has been abolished. Everything is logical but kind of otherwise"… claims director Nils Spangenberg. "Four Nights of Dream" is Moto Osada's first operatic work, and he is responsible for both music and libretto. Four Nights of Dream is based on a Japanese cultural classic, "Ten Nights of Dream" by Soseki Natsume, written in 1908. Moto Osada, who grew up in Tokyo, has lived in New York for many years, where he studied at the Manhattan School of Music. "The illusionary nature of the simple and imaginative stories found in Four Nights of Dream is particularly well suited for the medium of opera. Just as the settings and the characters are surreal, so is opera by nature, where the dialogue is sung instead of spoken. Indeed, at the heart of the story's development is the music itself, a characteristic that distinguishes opera from other media such as television and film. Four Nights of Dream deals with the issues that lurk in the depths of our own subconsciousness. Desire, anxiety, fear and ego, the universal themes of humanity." Moto Osada comments on Four Nights of Dream. All reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. Quotes from the Swedish press: "With the auditorium dressed entirely in white Vadstena Academy's first performance of Moto Osadas four Japanese dreams becomes a therapy of light. It is surreal, beautiful and extremely strong… This dream may be at least as crisp and clear as the waking life…That makes this journey through dreams one of the strongest performances I have ever seen from Vadstena Academy." Sara Nordin, Dagens Nyheter "A dreamy wise move in Vadstena! The performance is interpreted with a clarity and inventiveness that is a pleasure to experience and the opera is presented with a mixture of action and commented storytelling, a bit like ancient choirs, settled for six singers and a mime… This is Osadas first opera. Let it not be the last!" Per Feltzin, Swedish Radio Culture News "It is not the night's darkness, but the symbolic theatrical interpretation and the music's fascinating force that creates the dream of this different, fascinating and very notable opera event." Karin Helander, Svenska Dagbladet The Swedish Radio recorded the opera on the 2nd of August and it will be broadcasted on channel P2 the 20th of September 7.15 PM.

Moto Osada, composer of Four Nights of Dream. Photo: Markus Gˆ€rder Joa Helgesson as "The Samurai" in Moto Osadas Four Nights of Dream. Photo: Markus Gˆ€rder Akeo Hasegawa as "The Father" in Moto Osadas Four Nights of Dream. Photo: Markus Gˆ€rder