Oratory For the 770th anniversary of the founding of Klaipėda on 1 August 2022, Klaipėda State Music Theatre presented a special gift to the residents and guests of Klaipėda, celebrating the honourable anniversary. The theatre marked the city's 770th birthday with the world premiere of Alvidas Remesa's oratorio "The Tale of Memelburg" and opened the programme of the 2nd Klaipėda Festival with it.

The city of Klaipėda is considered to have been founded in 1252. The date of August 1st, when the agreement between the Bishop of Curonian Spit, Franciscan friar Heinrich of Lücelburg and the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights in Livonia, Eberhard of Zain, was confirmed to build a defensive castle and to establish the city at the point where the River Dangė flows into the lagoon. To commemorate this historical event, the Klaipėda State Musical Theatre (KVMT), in cooperation with its partners - the Klaipėda City Municipality, the Public Enterprise "City of Hope", the Association of Traditional and Historical Ships (TILA), and the Museum of the History of Lithuania Minor, organised a theatrical programme, during which the landing of Bishop Heinrich and the Franciscan Friars at the mouth of the Danube River, as well as their journey to the old castle of Klaipėda, were "reconstructed". The arrival of the guests was crowned by a theatrical oratorio on the stage of the former Memelburg Castle, which was composed especially for this occasion by two Franciscan friars living in Klaipėda - the composer, lay brother Alvidas Remesa OFS, and the author of the libretto, the elder of the Klaipėda monastery of St. Francis of Assisi, Br. Sigitas Benediktas Jurčys OFM.

"The oratorio, consisting of an introduction and seven movements, was written for symphony orchestra, brass and percussion group, mixed choir, soloists (discant, soprano, tenor, baritone), solo instruments - violin, cello, birbina, and keyboard. Among its main characters, Mme. This is the ancient name of the river Nemunas, which has taken on the symbolic form of a feminine element. In the work, we did not try to follow the historical chronology of Western Lithuania, but to present a human, romanticised version of the town's foundation. At the end of the oratorio, a document will be read - the will of the founder of the city, the Franciscan Bishop Heinrich of Lücelburg", - said the composer about his latest work.

"The bishop and the choir play the role of narrator here, they represent the heavenly element. They are the spreaders of ideas, the spiritual enchanters of the earth, the rulers of the elements, the bearers of knowledge. The Mme. and the Magister signify the meeting of man and woman as the primordial stage of the creation of mankind, the meeting of the earth and the Creator. She is woman, river, nature, love. He is the man, the warrior, the dreamer, courage. It is the meeting of two forms of life and the commitment to be together, creating, building the castle of love - the city of Klaipėda. This oratorio is a musical-poetic composition about the creation of the city. Its main theme is the courage to have a vision and the determination to realise it. This is how the idea of the city was born, and this is how we must represent it in our work," said Rūta Bunikytė, the Klaipėda director who directed the theatrical production of the oratorio.

A. Remesa, born and raised in Kaunas, has been living in Klaipėda for almost four decades, and has been an active participant of the city's cultural and spiritual life. The composer says of the city that has become his second home, which he prefers to call not a port city, but a "city of cities": "Klaipėda did not originate from a port, but from a church, a shrine, a monastery. I would consider Klaipėda to be the most liberal city in Lithuania that has withstood a difficult period of historical change. According to historical documents, the Franciscan monk Heinrich of Lücellburg, as Bishop of Curonia (1250-63), not only contributed to the foundation of the city of Klaipėda by building the first church of St. Peter and St. John of God. He also contributed to the establishment of the first churches of St. Nicholas and St. Nicholas. He was also active in pastoral work with the Lithuanians and Samogitians, as almost the whole of ethnographic Lithuania was annexed to the Diocese of Curonian Spit in 1237. Coming full circle 770 years later, it is as if we are back at that starting point again. Klaipėda seems to be re-established for the second time, but this time bearing the image and halo of resurrection."