FEDORA - Like flesh

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Opera Prize 2021
Nominee

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Jury
Nominee

Like flesh

Platform member

France
Opéra de Lille

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Like Flesh © Francesco d'Abbraccio i

Like flesh © © Francesco D'Abbraccio

Human bodies can change their shape, human passions can find new forms. Listen: there is more to life and love than you allow…

About the Project

Opéra de Lille and co-producers Opéra Orchestre national de Montpellier, Opéra national de Lorraine (Nancy), Opera Ballet Vlaanderen (Antwerp), Le Balcon and Ircam present a new chamber opera in one act, Like flesh. A subversion of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Like flesh is a dark contemporary myth informed by queer politics and environmental sciences. It offers an urgent warning against our destructive relationships with each other and our world.

Trapped in an unhappy marriage, a woman mourns the devastation of the forest around her. An unexpected affair instigates an explosive metamorphosis, and she finds perfect release as a tree. But the world is a dangerous place for trees, and deep in the forest a forester and a student lay claim to a body of wood and leaf, one for money and one for love.

Written in fragmented scenes, the narrative, led by three protagonists, is interrupted by poetic monologues from a vocal ensemble representing the Forest, who guide us from the last ice age to the 6th Great Extinction, creating a vivid context for the soloists to inhabit. The music is scored for an amplified chamber ensemble and a distributed array of 64 speakers spread throughout the hall, which gradually shift the audience's perception of the space, reflecting the libretto's themes of transformation.

Why should you support us?

Trees stabilise soil, enforce coastlines, and prevent desertification. Without trees and their symbiotic partners, mycorrhizal fungi, Earth would be uninhabitable for humans and many of our beyond-human neighbors. And yet, every minute a rainforest area the size of 30 football fields is cut down, threatening 137 lifeforms a day with extinction.

Like Flesh is an opera that is not afraid of science-backed activism. We believe opera can encourage self-reflection and demand radical change. The very content of Like flesh is a political statement: we challenge the orthodoxy of myth-inspired operas, safe in an ancient and patriarchal past. In our version, the metamorphosis of Woman to Tree is not a tragic climax, but the beginning of a passionate story about humankind’s troubled relationship with the natural world. Informed by the burgeoning affiliation between environmental and queer theories, Like flesh asks: How do we live with change and difference? Can we learn to love our environment as we love each other? And what happens if we fail?

While the libretto explores the beyond-human world through environmental science, the score imagines that world – inaudible to the human ear – through new technologies. On the micro-level, advanced modelling of biological growth patterns is used to animate acoustic sound cells, creating a visceral experience of the growth of fungi, moss, and roots. On the macro-level, these textures are diffused through a unique setup of speakers placed under the audience’s seats, creating ripples, swarms and waves in the hall. This gradual expansion and transformation of stage and hall into a living environment not only echoes the woman’s metamorphosis but serves as an artistic response to our modern experience of virtual realities.

Silvia Costa’s staging draws these multiple elements into a cohesive conceptual whole with a ‘living’ design enriched by Artificial Intelligence, created by ground-breaking artist Francesco D’Abbraccio.

Who are we?

Our international creative team includes American-Israeli composer Sivan Eldar; British librettist Cordelia Lynn; Italian director Silvia Costa and her team, joined on this occasion by the Artificial Intelligence visual artist Francesco D’Abbraccio; Ircam Computer Music Designer Augustin Muller and French conductor Maxime Pascal, leading his innovative ensemble Le Balcon.

The World Premiere of Like flesh will be at Lille on 21st January 2022, with Dutch Contralto Helena Rasker (Woman/Tree), British Bass Baryton William Dazeley (Forester) and Anglo-Belgian soprano Juliette Allen (Student).

It is Cordelia and Sivan’s first full-length opera, following a successful four-year collaboration on vocal and choral concert works.

Sivan Eldar

Composer

Cordelia Lynn

Librettist

Silvia Costa

Stage Director and Set Designer

Augustin Muller

Sound designer / Computer music designer

Francesco D'Abbraccio

AI Video Designer

Alessio Valmori

Set Designer

Laura Dondoli

Costume Designer

Andrea Sanson

Lighting Designer

Maxime Pascal

Conductor

Partners

Opéra national de Lorraine

France

Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier Occitanie

France

Ircam

France

Supporters

Anonymous donated 2 years ago

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