The first Croatian opera with a musical text by Janko Polić Kamov.
One of the few Croatian composers who have been working on the revitalisation of Croatia’s musical heritage for decades accepted the challenge of incorporating music to the text of Janko Polić Kamov and composing the first Croatian opera after Kamov.
Zoran Juranić has composed some fifty works in the field of orchestral, chamber, piano and vocal music. Not long ago, the discovery of the hitherto unknown libretto written by Janko Polić Kamov for his brother Milutin intrigued the Croatian cultural public. Although not originally Kamov’s story (the libretto is written according to the content of Derenčin’s drama Slijepčeva ljubav – A Blind Man’s Love), the text that Kamov gave the title When the Blind See has all the qualities of the dishevelled and direct author’s narrative, and also demonstrates a very good grasp of the rules of religious librettists.
As Milutin Polić’s tragic fate prevented him from being able to write an opera, by incorporating music to this text, Juranić wants to contribute to the memory of both of the Polić brothers and their fates, so that some motifs and sketches for the opera that Milutin was able to write are preserved in the score. The opera is preceded by the Prologue, Kamov’s Credo, in which he settles on the main themes of the then poetic mainstream – love and national enthusiasm, as well as the superficiality of social motives.
An honorary member of the Rijeka Opera Ensemble, Rijeka international mezzo-soprano and the youngest soloist of the Stuttgart State Opera in Vienna – Diana Haller (HR), plays the main role.