Kosovo Opera Composer, ‘Ignored’ at Home, Offered Vienna Premiere

Despite coming from a country where opera composers are rare, Pristina-based classical music, film and theatre composer Trimor Dhomi is one of four selected applicants from all over the world whose work is going to be premiered in Vienna in June.

Inspired by stories of Syrian refugee children, it is important for Dhomi - a former refugee - to have been selected as a composer from Kosovo whose opera features a Syrian character and two other characters who are refugees from the 1999 Kosovo war.

He told BIRN that he hopes the opera will have an impact, "not for the opera itself but for the importance of those characters, of those stories".

The project that was selected by the Vienna Summer Music Festival was previously ignored by the Kosovo Ministry of Culture, where the composer applied for support.

"My project was not supported, not commented on, even not evaluated; on the contrary, my work has been offended," Dhomi says, recalling how he was told by one of the ministerial commission members that 'it was a very bad work' when they met on the street.

Photo: EPA/ CHRISTIAN CHARISIUS

Inspired by refugees' stories

The opera came about after the composer read articles from the humanitarian aid organisation Merci Corps - interviews of Syrian refugees, particularly those who were living in camps in Jordan.

Jordan's Zaatari refugee camp, open since 2012, houses approximately 80,000 Syrians.

Recalling his own experience as a Kosovo war refugee, Trimori said he understood  "the feeling when no one accepts you".

"You see yourself in a field with your mom, dad, grandmother, brother, sister, neighbour, cousins, friends, people you did not know but are alongside you and hundreds of thousands under rain and...

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