The Michigan Opera Theater “Bliss” takes place in the Michigan Building Theater

The Michigan Opera Theater’s quest to bring opera to the most unconventional places continues Saturday as it performs “Bliss” for a 12-hour period Saturday inside the iconic Michigan Building Theater, a former theater transformed into parking lot.

“Bliss”, staged from noon to midnight on Saturday with the same actors and orchestra, will stage three minutes of “Les Noces de Figaro”. Tickets have no fixed price and will instead be on a pay as you can basis.

MOT Artistic Director Yuval Sharon said with “Bliss” that it’s about inviting the community to find common ground, forgiveness and understanding together.

“Detroit’s motto is ‘Speramus meliora / Resurget cineribus’, which translates to ‘We hope for better things / He will rise from the ashes,'” Sharon said in a press release. “It was adopted literally after a major fire swept through the city, but it speaks just as well of our present moment – a time when the people of Detroit look to the city’s past and imagine a new future that doesn’t is not only prosperous for the privileged few, but fair and equitable for all. ”

“Bliss,” a recreation of Ragnar Kjartansson’s 12-hour performance, marks the first live performance at the Michigan Building Theater on Bagley since it was converted to a parking structure in the 1970s.

It is also the last ready-to-use location for Sharon, the MOT and its “Out and About” programming. They gave performances this year at the Aretha Franklin Amphitheater and Meadow Brook Amphitheater. Last year, he made international headlines by staging “Twilight: Gods” on multiple levels of the six-story Detroit Opera House Parking Center.

“I want opera to be close to everyday life,” Sharon said in June. “I want people not to think of this as the castle on the hill which is off-limits or inaccessible, distant.”

With the Michigan Building Theater, Sharon said it was a perfect “layered microcosm of Detroit history.”

“It was built in the exact spot where Henry Ford built his first automobile, and perfectly summed up the optimism and excess of the city’s rising business class before it was ruthlessly and ruthlessly decommissioned. incomplete, ”said Sharon. “But elements of that hope and opulence remain.”

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