Os dias mais longos e os mais curtos

Os dias mais longos e os mais curtos (2022) was commissioned by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation last year and received its world premiere in September 2022 at the Grande Auditorio in Lisbon to a sell-out crowd of over one thousand audience members. The work is among – if not the – most technologically advanced modern opera-theatre productions in the world, combining groundbreaking research into 3D LED holographic projection and new surfaces. The Gulbenkian Foundation’s text put it, “[t]he convergence of major current issues and the search for supreme beauty has frequently manifested itself in [Birman’s] works for vocal ensembles, culminating in Os dias mais longos e os mais curtos, produced for the Gulbenkian Foundation and performed for the first time. The lessons learned from this premiere about image rendering, 3D projection, and surface mapping, has proved invaluable to my future work in this genre, and this project itself will remain for the coming years a crucial advancement into art-tech dramaturgy, particularly with the endorsement of one of Europe’s most prestigious art and culture foundations.