Purgatory

the second part of the musical trilogy The Divine Comedy / a musical situation comedy / world premiere

The second work in a freely linked trilogy by the music composer Zdenek Merta and the librettist and director Stanislav Moša, comprising Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise, takes us to a convent which becomes the refuge of three friends, the members of a well-known rock band. They are hiding there from the mafia, disguised as nuns. In these new circumstances, the distinctive musicians, whose lives are very, very far from being ordinary and moral, have to fully conform to the rules of the order which took them under their roof as their own, and forget all the joys of the world, even if they are exposed to all possible kinds of temptation.

Every minute of their stay in this environment is pure purgatory for them! Here, however, the convent isn’t just a place of service and self-denial; it is also a place where music has been cultivated for centuries. Of course, music which is miles away from that practiced by the three rockers. The confrontation of two completely different attitudes to life as well as music brings, apart from extreme tension, outer and inner conflicts and dramatic, though here mainly comic, misunderstandings, also inspiration and an initiation to the possibilities for enriching and improving one’s deep-rooted and often also unclearly motivated everyday routine - both in life and in music.