Opera for the Dead
Opera for the Dead is a hybrid cyber opera about life, death and memory created by award winning composer and Guzeng artist Mindy Meng Wang and sound technologist and composer Monica Lim. The show has performed at Asia TOPA, OzAsia festival and the Sydney festival and now Arts House in Melbourne.
Opera for the Dead is a beautiful immersive show that awakens your aural and visual senses. It takes you on a mysterious journey into the unknown while it challenges your own belief system on death, burial and ritual.
The show pays homage to ancient Chinese mourning rituals combining old and new digital technology whilst exploring the connection between life and death. It poses challenging tensions between spirituality and materialism in context to the afterlife and how grief is experienced when a loved one has passed.
Audiences enter freely via a curtained off space, confronted by a stark elongated neon lit sign that hangs from the ceiling - rolling the word ‘remembrance’ in English and Cantonese/Mandarin; this appears to signify a hyper- tech reminder of mourning ritual just prior to entering the show.
As we enter the hauntingly hazy performance space, urn like dishes hang low, hold digitised vibrating mandarins while a wafting aroma of citrus incense fills the air.
The urns, monitored by two roaming performers known as Wu Chang (Wendy Jiawen Feng and Ong Wen Chen), represent iconic death deities in Buddhist teachings that translate into ‘impermanence’ - traditionally means that everything changes and nothing is permanent.
The five musicians on five small stages have orchestrated a unique and magical experience with Mindy Meng Wang on Guzheng (traditional ancient Chinese plucked zither); Monica Lim on Electronic; Alexander Meagher on percussion; Nils Hobiger on Cello and Yu Tien Lin (vocalist). The Wu Chang effortlessly rotate the individual stages around the space, moving the performance into new dimensions as it offers audience alternate perspectives and awareness raising experiences.
The small stages are curtained and intermittently projected with wonderfully intricate bright colourful digitised animation (Rel Pham) that reflect on rituals, colours and practises of death and burial in traditional Chinese burial ceremonies. Rel Pham is also a solo artist and a superb talent who works with digitised animation, his new solo show is also on exhibit in the basement gallery at the venue.
Yu Tien Lin provides a sensational vocal range includes a high-pitched song that is ghostly and mournful, he is impeccably dressed in traditional white costume includes a glowing head dress. He intricately part of the ensemble, but his solo performance is heart wrenchingly powerful and spiritual.
As the show nears end a fabulous sound and visual experience takes place with four-dimensional digital imagery of ancient household objects circulate the performers ( a homage to ancient burial practises); a sensational crescendo completes the show leaving the audience aghast in amazement.
A truly unforgettable show and worth the experience!
Flora Georgiou
Photographer: Gregory Lorenzutti.
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