When the young speak, let the old listen

The musical part of the musical was prepared superbly, to the limits that can still be judged through the eyes of a listener who admires the granddaughter of the violinists. Everyone did their job superbly, the orchestra, most of them amateurs and amateurs, well, future professionals too, performed their part perfectly. Oops, leaving aside a slight dip below the commanded frequency, but as a whole - superb. Just like everyone else, with the choral section in the background, which with potency was able to override the first front line of the orchestrators and tell its part of the truth.

On Saturday, 23 August, Križanke was bursting at the seams. In the framework of the Ljubljana Festival was The Slovenian Youth Orchestra with musicians, singers and storytellers from almost 20 countries. An international cast of young people performed the popular musical Child of Peace (Peace Child), from the pen of David Gordon was created some forty years ago and has seen more than ten thousand performances around the world. This Slovenian-international version is under the direction of the conductor and activist for world peace Živa Ploj Peršuh illuminated the Križanke stage with her immense energy, her love for music and her hope that the world, with such youthful energy, is far from doomed, that there are still many paths to a life free from war, injustice, hunger and oppression. Paradise is here, not in heaven, paradise is (can be) only us!

The event was beautifully announced by our Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon, which was the event's patron of honour. A reprise is planned for October in Vienna. The musical is a post-hippie work, one of the last appeals of a time when the world was decorated with flowers, love, a future without wars. Yes, beautiful times, we would say today, although even then there was no shortage of horrors and plagues, times that conscious young people tried to change, to revalue, to turn into a kind of paradise of love and peace on Earth. But very little of that rosy revolution remains. The world that the children of yesterday dreamed of is today even more sophisticatedly cruel (Gaza, Ukraine...), with a hundred and one ways of massacres, excommunications, environmental destruction, the wiping out of civilisations. Our planet is being divided even more potently (now in the sense of a global, integrated celestial body orbiting the Sun, dear and common to us all) into rich and poor poles: on the one hand, abundance of everything, on the other, poverty, hunger and hopelessness.

The musical therefore restores the forces of hope and peace through a relaxed, frank conversation, an appeal to all people that there can only be one paradise, that no religion can guarantee a heaven as beautiful as the one we can create on Earth, which is given to us as an opportunity to manage and flourish. And when children, young people, our future and our hope, speak of this, the old become speechless and try to grasp that their word is the only possible path to happiness, the path to a happy coexistence for all.

How powerful is the message of the musical: one day one will have to die, it's a matter of nature and the universe (Seikilus' poem from ancient Greece says it beautifully in one sentence: everything that lives also dies), but when I die, I want to die fulfilled, surrounded by love and peace, at peace (uh, how close those two words are), knowing and feeling that I have made the most of my life's opportunity, this miracle of being here and now, and I am surrounded by my loving people before I go. That I will complete the story of my life and return to the fabric of the universe, among immortal atoms, dust and ashes, happy and at peace. And as the message of the musical goes, I want to die like this, in a beautiful way, fulfilled in the arms of the laws of nature, not trapped in a war, not starved to the bare bones by the big egotistical corporations that forge selfish profits at the expense of human beings and live life by the wayside. And they crave for eternity where there is none. I want to die loved and I want to love after death.

The musical is a single ode to hope, even if it is based on real facts, on the facts of a modern world that is completely devoid of hope, if we look at it only with realistic spectacles. The composer David Gordon has conceived it as a "an open, participatory performance for young people", it says Metka Sulic in the concert sheet, and indeed, despite the terrible messages that are strung together in the first part, despite the depressing truths that are spoken by the young people of different races, cultures and religions, there is always a light on in the background. First as a silent firefly flickering across the spring sky, but towards the end more and more as the glowing light of love, which is true hope, which is the only real power for the world to go on living in happiness and well-being for all, without distinction, without separation, neither religious nor cultural, neither by skin colour nor by the shape of the haircut, to be a little generalised. Yes, despite the terrible sequences in the first part, the composer seduces the musical into hope, into love, into harmony, and also into a firm demand that has a clear and uncompromising political setting, almost close to a manifesto: Dear President, turn the world into something good and beautiful, throw the key of the atomic cataclysm somewhere deep into the abyss, and help us all to live in the world hand in hand, no matter what, all different in one goodness, all different in one love!

The musical part of the musical was prepared superbly, to the limits that can still be judged through the eyes of a listener who admires the granddaughter of the violinists. Everyone did their job superbly, the orchestra, most of them amateurs and amateurs, well, future professionals too, performed their part perfectly. It's an old maxim that a symphony orchestra has its quality measure in the brass players: if they suck, intonationally and with many draughts, then everything sucks. Not so this time, the brass players were already bursting out of their mouths with a unity and harmony that, even in the case of professionals, can only be wishful thinking. Oops, let's leave aside a slight dip below the commanded frequency, but as a whole - superb. Just like all the others, with the choral section in the background, which with potency was able to override the first front line of the orchestrators and tell its part of the truth.

All those who created this project can be proud of their work. We believe they have been mentioned in many places, but let us thank them here: the author of the adaptation is Matija Krečič, screenwriter David Woollcombethe narrators/singers were (taken from the concert sheet) Pia Fabian, Adrian Groselj, Alessandro Lionel Michele Asselin, Lydia Mushkatina, Shea Ferron. And a special shout-out to the voice from the background, Dominic Byron Mafham, and the director of the event was Matej Filipčič.