Salzburg gives its major art prize to an Egyptian composer
mainThe grand arts prize of the Salzburg region, worth 15,000 Euros, is to be awarded on December 3 to Hossam Mahmoud. An Egyptian who has lived in Austria since 1990, Mahmoud, 48, scored a success early this year at the Salzburg Landestheater with his opera, 18 Days.
Judging from the trailer, this seems to be just one of those run-of-the-mill operas celebrating nightmare, following the modernist convention of cultivating negativity and destruction. Like modernist architecture, these conventions can easily be transported to other cultures, and of course non-European composers can easily absorb contemporaneity and feeling up-to-date by tapping into European post-war misery.
Can’t judge an opera by the trailer.
This prize could lead to 18 Days being made in to a major motion picture by Lars von Trier!!