Ekvinokcij (Equinox), Marjan Kozina’s only opera and one of the peaks of the Slovenian repertoire, is back on the stage of SNG Opera in balet Ljubljana eighty years after its first performance in 1946 and for the first time since 1998. Kozina wrote the score and the libretto during the Second World War, after Ivo Vojnović’s drama, and hid the manuscript in his parents’ garden until the war was over. The story is set on the coast near Dubrovnik around 1860, in the years when Dalmatians were leaving for overseas. Niko, once a local and now a rich “American”, sails back into the town where Jele has raised their son Ivo alone, and where Ivo and Anica, Frano’s daughter, are in love. His return becomes a reckoning with power, guilt and justice, played out under the storm of the equinox.
Janusz Kica’s new production places the story in a stark, elemental world. Karin Fritz’s set and Stella Ivšek’s video make the sea a constant presence, from the still surface underfoot to the towering waves of the equinoctial storm, while Leo Kulaš’s costumes and Andrej Koležnik’s lighting hold the characters between everyday life and tragedy. Under Marko Hribernik, Kozina’s score gathers force scene by scene. The photographs follow that arc: the community on the shore, the returning stranger, a mother and her son, and the storm that closes over them all.
Premiere: 5 November 2026, SNG Opera in balet Ljubljana.
Credits:
Music and libretto: Marjan Kozina, after the drama by Ivo Vojnović
Conductor: Marko Hribernik
Director: Janusz Kica
Set design: Karin Fritz
Costume design: Leo Kulaš
Lighting design: Andrej Koležnik
Choreography: Anja Möderndorfer
Video: Stella Ivšek
Dramaturgy: Gregor Pompe
Chorus master: Željka Ulčnik Remic
Production: Chorus and Orchestra of SNG Opera in balet Ljubljana
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