Katinka Fogh Vindelev & Marie Kølbæk Iversen: Moonologue. For our Suns

Moonologue. For our Suns is a new opera produced in collaboration between composer Katinka Fogh Vindelev and visual artist Marie Kølbæk Iversen. The opera was commissioned by Louisiana – Museum of Modern Art and is an independent continuation of Kølbæk Iversen’s long-term art project Io/I, which formed part of Marie Laurberg’s exhibition “The Moon” at Louisiana and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in 2018-19. 

In the opera's libretto, written by Kølbæk Iversen, the diverging identities of Io is explored: Io is Jupiter's inner-most moon, which was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei, but she is also the Greek-Roman mythological priestess after whom the moon is named. Through Galileo's Italian ('io' is the Italian word for 'I') the different manifestations of Io are synthesised into a composite Self; a Self thus also encompassing Galileo as well as the artists – the audience even; a Self which speaks through the Moonologue.

In her composition of Kølbæk Iversen's text, Fogh Vindelev takes as her starting point this blurring of identities, which she reflects in the two voices – a male and a female voice, a countertenor and a soprano (sung by Morten Grove Frandsen and Fogh Vindelev herself) – that intersect and diffuse each other beyond the singers’ cultural and biological genders. The composition shifts between recitative and abstract parts together reflecting the hybridising, supernatural, and mythic character of the text.

The collaboration initially manifested as two live performances at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art during the autumn and winter of 2018, for which Kølbæk Iversen created the masks and costumes. The opera was released as a limited vinyl edition by Antipyrine Records in late 2018 and is launched on the occasion of the performance of the work at Cisternerne as part of VEGA|ARTS and A Colossal Weekend on May 12th, 2019.