The beginning of our century, alongside the new trends in art, witnessed the emergence of an idea that in the future, art will inevitably be a synthesis of music, various forms of visual art, colours and maybe even of movement, which should be born in an opera theatre since on the basis of these forms an opera performance is created. The then "new" trends of visual art have long grown old while we don't see the inevitable and pursued synthesis, though the necessary conditions are already there. The major obstacle - like today -must have been the fact that musicians at the opera house were much further from the principles of visual art than any other part of the creative intelligentsia.
The Metropolitan Opera announced its credo to the entire world (1973) saying that opera is music and has no common roots with drama. It was looking for a suitable painter but could not find one. Others, attempting to be "the first" to use the magical word "synthesis", published books claiming to be "the first book in the world about synthesis" as well as saying that synthesis is "an impulse received from music".
Everybody receives impulses from music but so far synthesis has not been achieved. Some believe that repetition of music in the scenery will constitute synthesis. Well, you can devise even a very powerful composition formula for the given music but you cannot apply a static formula to the "moving" music.
The scenery should be included into opera as part of the orchestra where all instruments play their separate melodies. Neither the brass nor percussion instruments repeat the violins. The two separate arts - music and visual art - should, according to Orff, "play music".
The known history of visual art and its discoveries, stemming from the Atlantis epochs, is by far more extensive than the history of music and has no less means and forms of expression to create concords. Synthesis opens completely new opportunities. The difficulty, though, lies in preparing consciousness to perceive relations between forms as "concords", in particular the consciousness of those who never realised even the simplest Plato's instruction received from Egypt: musicality does not equal the mastery of a musical instrument. It must be present in all arts based on harmony: sculpture, painting, architecture, music, dance, poetry... As early as in 1935 I understood the level of chaos on stage when the libretto was illustrated by the scenery or, worse still, when discoveries of drama were used for the scenery in opera. Yet I was determined, by the end of the century, to find the concrete principles of the synthesis of visual art and music - as the necessity for the future. 40 years of "laboratory" work finally provided me with concrete means and a considerable number of composition systems for a scientifically based creative method of synthesis. In 1979 the staging of Verdi's Don Carlo saw me building all the acts following the same composition formula Requiem.
Many believe that we want to serve opera by any means. Not in the least! We simply pave the way for the future. Today opera does not deserve such sacrifices. Disfigured forms of art create.

chaos. And chaos means darkness therefore such art, instead of being an inspiration to the humanity and a beacon of culture in all times, overwhelms human consciousness with chaos which, in its turn, breeds chaos in life...
It is not difficult to find plastic forms to echo the sounds of music. But such a stiff motif should not be applied to a flow of musical sounds. Therefore it is particularly important to feel the nature of the direction of the flow as well as what happens when it crosses the directions of the visible forms. Upon changing the latter, we obtain a different expression of music. Which is complicated enough... Trying to prove it to a sceptic is a waste of effort.
Because a line can sound, as with the Chinese or Japanese. As with Dobuzinskis who, all his life, was learning to speak by pulling the line. And here they are tense like strings. Such lines also sound, just in a different way. Together with other forms, engravings stress the illusion of reality. The musical reality.
Directions of the flows of engravings correlate with sounds. You find a direction that clearly coincides with music. In this manner you can identify concords. Then conies the contrast... Intersections of the flows help you create individual chords... Then come the angles... I create by careful listening. I do not have rules or canons. It is very hard to establish something. Recently I have completely neglected the composition aspect of a piece of art. I just look at music itself. The mind here perhaps is a wooden instrument for forging hard granite. By forging with your mind, over the

decades you can create something and if you have light, the result can be instantaneous...
Yet the essence of synthesis is reached not by just repeating the given music. It is rather a certain continuation of instrumentation. In a symphonic orchestra, the brass do not repeat the violins. They are just playing. But in the same key. Now when you cover a black funeral procession with the lightest coloratura, you can clarify its sound to the most wonderful crystal. In synthesis, the contrast is very powerful. It is crucial, however, to feel and maintain the instrumentation. That explains it all.
The means used in the drama theatre are not at all suitable for the scenery in opera. The movement and voice of a drama actor need simplified forms and drama theatres know that well. The scenery for, say, Wagner perhaps could be well enough created by a good drama painter since the very form of Wagner's music needs great power, expressed in a very simplified manner. While the music of Mozart and the old classics needs the contrary...
Millions of sounds flowing from the orchestra cannot find concord with the form that has been simplified to meet a drama actor's word... From the stage we hear the most refined poetry which is then enchained by a rough scenery with no sign of musicality, as if made of coal... On the stage, music, the scenery, director's work and actor's movements must result in synthesis. The orchestra represents a good example of such synthesis: percussion instruments do not illustrate the violins but combination is achieved.

It is not the arrangement of objects that creates the real composition on stage. We need to transform them into lines and intersections. Figures can be broken down in several directions. When speaking the directions of lines we cross into the area of real composition. Here we deal with the fundamentals. All the difficulty lies in covering plastic form with "moving" music. No repetition is possible here since, according to the famous conductor and composer Jan Kubelik, "opera has no common roots either with drama or with the ballet. Opera is music and its performances must be led by the spirit of music itself." While what we see on the stage so far could be called "a cock fight" - with everyone (the director, the painter...) trying to have it his or her own way without thinking about the entire picture.
You need to be very mature to feel forms as concords. Forms are music too! When you join them in an appropriate way, their expression sounds. If the entirety is harmonious and orchestrated but there are a few mismatching forms, the dissonance is seen immediately. But not by everyone. Some painters believe that it is enough to set red against blue... While Van Gogh said that flows disturbed him, that he even felt thirsty... Therefore his trees indeed speak by their forms and his stars go round. And the sky joins in... This is his music. Life tormented him, and out of that suffering sprang everything. So maybe it is worth starting like this? It is not easy, though.
What I aspire to is present a strict framework of certain forms, "weld" the figures on the stage, put them on a steel track so that neither

the director, nor the actors could slip from them. I would like to restrict them, gloss over their insignificant movements, insignificant forms. Opera itself should provide opportunities to think about such natural force.
May I sum up the good and the honest in my works and reject the crooked and the banal... Never was I satisfied with the results of my effort. Perhaps I would be content provided I would concretely define the concord of music and form, the new solution to opera performances. The solution that has long been sought by everyone. And if I leave my modest trace in this, I will be the happiest man on earth.