Opera for 10 cashiers, supermarket sounds and piano

6th, 7th October 7 pm
Arts Printing House, Black Hall

Librettist: Vaiva Grainytė
Composer and music director: Lina Lapelytė
Director and set designer: Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė

Performed by: Indrė Anankaitė-Kalašnikovienė (Cashier I, early morning duet), Liucina Blaževič (Cashier II, a foreigner), Vida Valuckienė (Cashier III, an ecstatic optimist), Veronika Čičinskaitė-Golovanova (Cashier IV, rough bimbo), Lina Valionienė (Cashier V, a new girl), Rima Šovienė (Cashier VI, middle-aged woman who waits for Skype sessions with her son living in the UK), Milda Zapolskaitė (Cashier VII, a young woman with a degree in arts), Rita Račiūnienė (Cashier VIII, a single mother), Svetlana Bagdonaitė (Cashier IX, sings about sleeping products), Kristina Svolkinaitė (Cashier X, early morning duet)

Production: Operomanija

Duration: 55 mins (no intermission)
Premiere: April 11, 2011 (short version) / September 28, 2013 (full version)


Opera for 10 cashiers, supermarket sounds and piano, “Have a Good Day!” focuses on the inner lives of cashiers in a shopping centre: showing what lies behind their mechanical “Good afternoon!“, “Thank you!“, “Have a good day!” and fake smiles. Faceless, robot-like shop workers found in everyday life are transformed into unique and lively characters. Their secret thoughts and biographies are turned into short, personal dramas. The characters of different sales clerks, embodying universal archetypes, convey the predominant social landscape. The libretto is a revealing mosaic of spoken, literary language and documentary.
The atmosphere of the supermarket is established through the glimmering and buzzing installation of daylight lamps and environmental sounds, connecting the audience to the stage and the 10 cashiers. The set itself is very minimalistic. Real goods – the recognisable décor of a shopping centre – exist only in acoustic and verbal form.
The monotonous beep of each item being scanned is a key sound through the whole opera. It gets louder and quieter, but it is always present. Songs that accompany the beeping are as monotonous as the process of shopping and selling. Instead of becoming the main point of the opera, music serves the thoughts of the cashiers – it facilitates their voice.
To avoid any moral or condemnatory suggestion, a critical attitude towards capitalism is expressed through humour, paradox, irony and poetry. The blend of different destinies is transformed into one poem suggesting the pleasure of consumption.