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Please note:

In the weekend of 21-22 June, 750 years Amsterdam will be celebrated on the A10 ring road. As a result, Muziekgebouw will be less accessible by car. more information

World premiere

Otemba - Daring Women

Misato Mochizuki, Jan van den Berg, Janine Brogt, New European Ensemble

Copyright information:© DigiDaan

Otemba – Daring Women is a musical theatre piece in celebration of Amsterdam 750, composed by Misato Mochizuki. The piece is based on the painting Portrait of Pieter Cnoll, Cornelia van Nijenrode, their two daughters Catharina and Hester, the enslaved Surapati and an enslaved woman (Batavia, 1665) by Jacob Coeman, which is in the Rijksmuseum. In Otemba – Daring Women, Cornelia steps out of the painting and has a conversation with the restorer about colonial relations, the feminine gaze and autonomy.


click here to read the interview with Janine Brogt en Jan van den Berg

The restoration of the 17th-century painting that depicts a colonial scene results in a nocturnal encounter between the Indonesian restorer and the woman in the portrait: the Japanese-Dutch Cornelia van Nijenrode, wife of Pieter Cnoll, a wealthy senior merchant in Batavia. She remarried after his death and was the first woman in the Netherlands to file a lawsuit around financial self-determination when she wished to divorce her second husband. 

  

The libretto of Otemba – Daring Women is by Janine Brogt, and the piece is directed by Jan van den Berg. The leading roles are played by soloists Ryoko Aoki, Bernadeta Astari and Michael Wilmering. Misato Mochizuki was previously featured at the Holland Festival with L’heure bleue in 2013.


'Otemba' is not just the title of the piece, but also one of over one hundred and sixty words that Japanese derives from the Dutch language. It refers to rebellious women who refuse to be subjected and go their own way.


'In Otemba, different characters from different times come together and champion a new view of our history. Restoration is also called ‘management of change’, and this restoration offers a renewed, decolonising perspective on the past. Otemba comes to life.'  

– Jan van den Berg



In her music, Mochizuki connects musical elements from different musical traditions from Japan and the West. With impressionistic, colourful sounds as a guiding principle, a new atmosphere and story emerge. 


The piece explores questions of identity, the impact of our colonial heritage, and shows women who go their own way, right through time, space and social class divisions.


In Otemba – Daring Women, each character sings in a style that fits their time and background. Mochizuki draws from her experience as artist in residence at IRCAM, the acclaimed centre for contemporary music in Paris. The singers inject their own cultural baggage and unique tonal colour: Bernadeta Astari is an Indonesian, classically trained soprano, while Ryoko Aoki combines traditional Japanese Noh recitations (utai) with contemporary music. 


The piece was inspired by the remarkable life story of the woman depicted in the painting: Cornelia van Nijenrode. She was the daughter of the Japanese woman Surishira and Cornelis van Nijenrode, a Dutch merchant in Hirado, the first Dutch East India Company trading post in Japan. At the age of 23, Cornelia married Pieter Cnoll. Four years after Pieter Cnoll died, Cornelia remarried with Joan Bitter, a disastrous decision, as Bitter was mainly interested in Cornelia’s money. The marriage quickly and irreparably deteriorated. Cornelia filed for divorce, which was highly unusual at the time. She went all the way to the Supreme Court to claim her rights in the first Dutch divorce case in which a woman demanded legal capacity over her own assets.


Notably, the later Indonesian freedom fighter Untung Surapati is depicted on the painting as well. The Republic of Indonesia honoured him as a national hero in 1975, thirty years after the Republika Indonesia was declared.  

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dates

Thu June 19 8:30 PM

Fri June 20 8:30 PM

Sat June 21 8:30 PM

prices

  • default including drink from € 33,75
  • CJP/student/scholar incl. a drink € 17,75

information

  • English, Indonesian, Japanese surtitles: English, Dutch

  • 1 hour 20 minutes

introduction:

Are you curious about the story behind this remarkable opera? Visit the introduction by librettist Janine Brogt at 7:45 PM (language: Dutch).

SYNOPSIS 

During the restoration of a 17th-century painting at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, an extraordinary event unfolds: Cornelia van Nijenrode, a Japanese-Dutch woman from the colonial past, steps out of her frame — and her own time — into the 21st century. She engages Kirana Diah, the Indonesian restorer of the painting, in a nocturnal conversation about colonial power structures, the female gaze, and the quest for autonomy.


The performance depicts a magical moment in the restoration process: a one-time nocturnal encounter of heterogeneous identities and cultures, cutting across the constraints of time and space; suspended between painting and reality, between then and now, between East and West.


Alongside them: a scanning robot, an artificial intelligence programmed for neutral data analysis yet surprisingly, it too finds its own voice. Inspired by Portrait of Pieter Cnoll, Cornelia van Nijenrode, their two daughters Catharina and Hester, the enslaved Surapati, and an enslaved woman (Batavia, 1665) by Jacob Coeman (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam).


CONTEXT

Cornelia van Nijenrode was a 17th-century woman of mixed Japanese and Dutch heritage, part of the upper class of former Batavia. As a child, she was cast out of Japan because of her mixed background; as an adult, she was vilified for initiating divorce proceedings against her second husband, Joan Bitter, in which she asserted her right to financial self-determination.


Kirana Diah is a young art historian from present-day Jakarta who has left her home country to work as a restorer at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. She specializes in restoring paintings originating from Indonesia, driven by the conviction that the history of a painting must not be erased through restoration. In her view, visible scars on a canvas are powerful witnesses to the pain of the (colonial) past.


Miro is a curator specialising in computational materials science, responsible for the scanning technology that provides information about the pigments used and insight into the painting process and possible underdrawings and alterations of the painting.


In the Amsterdam of 2025, Kirana Diah works as a conservator on the 17th-century painting depicting Cornelia van Nijenrode with her first husband Pieter Cnoll, chief merchant for the VOC in Batavia. Kirana is especially drawn to the painting because of Untung Surapati, one of Indonesia’s first freedom fighters. But Cornelia challenges her to a nocturnal conversation about untamability, about how they each view themselves and the other, about decolonization and self-determination. How do you, across centuries, look at each other’s cultural realities?


Restoring a painting is sometimes described as “management of change.” How we look at our history — how we gather knowledge, create knowledge, and rewrite history — is a political act. And so, too, is the way we restore a painting.

  • Lisa Konno, artist and designer

    Hanna Hachula

  • © DigiDaan

  • © DigiDaan

  • © DigiDaan

  • Kanako Abe - conductor

    François Schmitt

  • Otemba - Daring Women

    DigiDaan Fotografie

  • Otemba - Pieter Cnoll, Cornelia van Nijenrode, their two daughters Catharina and Hester, the enslaved Surapati and an enslaved woman, Jacob Coeman, 1665 [Rijksmuseum]

  • New European Ensemble

    Rob Overmeer

  • Janine Brogt, librettist

    Judith van IJken

  • Jan van den Berg, director

    DigiDaan Fotografie

  • Misato Mochizuki, composer

    Ayane Shindo

  • Michael Wilmering, bariton

    Otto van den Toorn

  • Ryoko Aoki, Noh singer

    Tadayuki Minamoto

  • Bernadeta Astari, soprano

    Viorica Cernica

Credits

music Misato Mochizuki libretto Janine Brogt artistic direction Jan van den Berg direction Jan van den Berg conductor Kanako Abe costumes Lisa Konno light design Gé Wegman video Jasper Kayser choreography Roshanak Morrowatian dramaturgy Janine Brogt vocals Ryoko Aoki (Cornelia van Nijenrode), Bernadeta Astari (Kirana Diah), Michael Wilmering (Miro) ensemble New European Ensemble flute Felicia van den End clarinet James Meldrum bassoon Aidan Campbell trumpet Ryan Linham harp Ernestine Stoop, Astrid Haring percussion Pepe Garcia violin Rada Ovcharova cello Willem Stam voice actor Ron Kaat rehearsal director Henry Kelder scanning robot Merijn Versnel kunstkist Studio Uku (Vos) general manager Onno Ephraim assistent director Giulia Casarola, Ellen van der Sar executive producer Marieke Schiphorst creative director Emlyn Stam production ensemble Ryanne Hofman production employee Laura Soeters marketing and publicity Pieter Hunfeld, Gabriella Kourieh photography Daan van Eijndhoven lighting board technician Lea Links Dutch translation Erik Borgman coproduction Theater Adhoc, New European Ensemble, Holland Festival with support from Marinus Plantema Foundation, Performing Arts Fund NL, Stichting Ammodo, Isaac Alfred Ailion Foundation, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Stichting Berg & van Dalen, Rabo ClubSupport introduction by Janine Brogt

This performance is made possible by