2025 - Opera MAMAN, or THE TOUNGE
Chamber Opera
8.2 – 9.2 2025, Moderna Museet Malmö, as a part of the exhibition “On the Absurd Drama That Is Also Life.

The role of the family and the cycles of the everyday are addressed in the experimental, feminist, and humorous chamber opera MAMAN, or THE TONGUE, in which the artist and writer Jenny Kalliokulju interweaves art, song, music and theatre.
The aim is an interdisciplinary, anti-hierarchical Gesamtkunstwerk, in which a painting installation also takes the shape of scenography and costumes during the performance of the opera.

Formally, Kalliokulju’s work is often a collaboration (real or fictitious) with other artists, writers and others. In the libretto, these voices form a choir and a dialogue together, which evokes a universal state of existential reflection and a striving for co-existence. The libretto comes from the artist’s own experiences as a mother of two. Everyday life, feelings of inadequacy are all palpable. Yet, despite its personal point of departure it captures a strongly familiar situation of everyday life’s cycles of relationships and physical bodies. (Text: Moderna Museet Malmö)

Concept, libretto, direction, costuming, scenography and recitation: Jenny Kalliokulju
Music and soprano: Johanna Kalliokulju
Bandmaster, piano and accordion: Tobias Kalliokulju
Soprano: Margaretha Dalhamm
Tenor: Oskar Roslund
Cello: Carl Henning Fredriksson
Light: Sofia Ivarsson
Curator: Andreas Nilsson