Full-length opera in German
for countertenor (“THE ONE FORGOTTEN BY PROPHECY”), children’s soprano (“A HOLOGRAM”), lyrical tenor (“A QUIET VOICE”), profound bass (“A LOWER OLDER VOICE”), 2-part children’s choir (“A HOLOGRAM CHOIR”), 8-part mixed choir (“THE ONE OVERLOOKED BY FORESIGHT”),
chamber orchestra (1[picc]-1[corangl]-2[1.asax,2.bcl]-2[2cbsn], 1-2-1-1, 3 perc, 1 e-git, 2 pno[1.org/2.synth], 1 hrp, 6-6-4-4-2), audio playbacks and live electronics (2017-20)

2:30 hours

​

composition: Eloain Lovis Hübner

libretto: Thomas Köck

co-conception: Maria Huber, Jakob Boeckh

​

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic the opera could not be performed yet, interested production partners are still being sought.

​

An audio recording of selected excerpts was made with the participation of Michael Taylor (countertenor), Philine Götz & Miriam Knackstedt (children’s sopranos), Robert Sellier (tenor), Michael Zehe (bass), children's/youth choir and chorus of the Oper Halle, Staatskapelle Halle (Michael Wendeberg, conductor), Maximiliano Estudies (electronics) and Michael Leverkus (audio engineer, recording director).

​

Broadcast dates:

October 24, 2020, MDR Kultur & MDR Klassik

November 12, 2020, BR-Klassik

​

Our time appears as a seemingly endless present – an ongoing state of crisis in which the future is perceived more as a threat than a promise. At the same time, ever new demands are being made of this possible future, which emanate from the everyday powerlessness of each individual in the face of overwhelming problems. The new music theater opera, opera, opera! revenants and revolutions confronts this ambivalent situation: Far in the distant future, a cyborg and a choir with partial amnesia wander through the eternal apocalyptic ice. Both consider themselves to be the last surviving humanoid beings, a bizarre situation from which endless philosophical chants and discussions develop in an absurd dialogue: Where do they come from, where are they are going? What could man ever have meant? What did the end of mankind look like, what did it sound like and what did really happen? Do we have ice age or war? Where were we on the last day? On the plane? No, on the platform – or yet part of an angry popular chorus in the middle of a grand opéra in 1830 that supposedly sparked a revolution and the founding of Belgium. The cyborg, plagued by stored memories, searches for answers, and the chorus also struggles for composure. Fragments, hauntings, individual as well as collective memories rise from his murky mind. In the face of these moments, the question arises again and again: What social potential does a collective voice still have? Where to put all these historical turning points and utopian longings in the face of rubble and human failure? Along the way they meet their own double, a cyborg hologram and a hologram chorus as a children’s choir in an abandoned theater. They think about the revolutionary power of opera and music, accidentally create a black hole and finally just wander on like post-Becketian fgures: plagued by forgetfulness and memory gaps, with weakening batteries and one or two good jokes for the road.
opera, opera, opera! revenants and revolutions sketches a post-apocalyptic world, long after the demise of mankind. The burning questions of where we remain and what happened “on the last day” are explored by the two seemingly last survivors, a cyborg and a choir, on a bizarre journey through discursive, sonic, cultural and technological remnants. Ultimately, they are left alone with the universe and infinity.