In 2019, dozens of people were killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo in an accident involving a lorry carrying acid on its way to the Mutanda mine. This is not an isolated incident, as the world's largest cobalt mine, operated by the Swiss multinational Glencore, has repeatedly been criticised for accidents and environmental pollution, but also for siphoning off resources without sharing the profits with a largely impoverished population.
Hèctor Parra's new opera, with a libretto written by Congolese-Austrian author Fiston Mwanza Mujila based on a script by Milo Rau, focuses on the causes and consequences of the accident, in which the lorry collided with a school bus next to a market.
Titus Engel first conducted the work in January in four performances at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, which presented Justice as a co-production with the Festival Tangente St. Pölten. Now the harrowing opera, which generated a great deal of press coverage and lively debate in Geneva, can be seen for the first time in Austria with the Tonkünstler Orchester Niederösterreich.
Festival Tangente St. Pölten
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