JULKA & JANEZ

The libretto for this new piece of chamber music was conceived after the epistolary novel A Certain Correspondence (Jedno dopisivanje) (1932) by Julka Chlapec-Đorđević, an essayist and prose writer, a great Yugoslav feminist and also a first doctor of philosophy in the Austro-Hungarian empire. As opposed to the book, here the names of the main characters (Marija and Oton) are changed into the writer's real name Julka and a »generic« name of Janez, attributed to a certaindoctor from Ljubljana. Julka, a free spirited feminist, born in a rich family from Vojvodina, is now in her mature years and lives in Prague in an open relationship with her husband and three children. She remembers her lover from her student days in Vienna, who lives a lonely and frustrated life in a narrow-minded Catholic family. In her letters and upon their actual meeting, Julka exposes to Janez her »sexual ethics«, which she assigns not only to her socialist and liberal convictions and her multicultural environment, but also to her new culture, i.e. jazz culture. Through their dialogue Janez attempts to save his identity and life, whereas Julka explores love and eroticism in their social and philosophical dimension.