MR RYBKA’S MYSTERY

melodrama for one comedian (and one) pianist

based on a short story by Karel Čapek

(2015)

Languages: French, Czech

Duration: 14’

Cast:
- 1 single performer (actor and pianist) performing both roles
or
- 2 performers, an actor and a pianist

Commissioned by and premiered at the Festival des Arcs by Kryštof Mařatka in July 2015

Unpublished score.

Recordings:

French version / Czech version

Kryštof Mařatka, actor-pianist

Extract from the score:

Notes on the work:

Like his other melodramas, Kryštof Mařatka gives a key role to the text of Mr Rybka’s Mystery and to its action. Without creating contrasts that would move the text to other semantic contexts, the music complements the narrative, which dominates the work.
The melodrama is inspired by a text by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. A great writer of a small country... We explain, and excuse, this national point of view, remembering that this small country, reassured by the European celebrity of its grandiose thirty years old playwright, was the Czechoslovak Republic, freshly born of the Treaty of Versailles in 1918. Čapek, the philosopher, the brilliant fantasist, prophet of the atomic age, the direct and funny storyteller, the journalist, the gardener, the traveller, the photographer, President T. G. Masaryk’s friend... It is not easy to portray this enigmatic man, and his fascinating, multiform work. “To understand is my first passion,” he wrote. “To express, the second. Not to express myself, but to express things.”

More about the melodramas in the chapter COMPOSER