OPERA
A Dream of Armageddon
SCHEDULE
2020/2021 SEASON
Supported by the Agency for Cultural Affairs Government of Japan in the fiscal 2020
New Production /
Commissioned Work, World Premiere
Music by FUJIKURA Dai
Opera in 9 Scenes
Sung in English with English and Japanese surtitles
OPERA PALACE
Supported by British Council
(UK in JAPAN affiliate programme)
Special thanks to Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Japan and Goethe-Institut Tokyo
15 Nov - 23 Nov, 2020 ( 4 Performances )
Running time is approx. 1 hour 40 mins without interval
DETAILS
Following on from Asters, this is the second in our series of commissioned works by Japanese composers. This is a new opera by prolific composer and music pioneer FUJIKURA Dai, who lives in London and is sought out by opera houses and orchestras around the world. This is the third opera by FUJIKURA, although only a concert version of Solaris has ever been performed in Japan. This performance is bound to draw national and international attention.
The theme chosen by FUJIKURA is A Dream of Armageddon, a short science fiction story written by H. G. WELLS at the beginning of the 20th century. Poet Harry ROSS, a long-time associate of FUJIKURA, worked on the libretto (in English), while FUJIKURA, in his typical bold style, transformed it into an opera that freely transcends space and time with a thrilling portrayal of the threats around us who live in the present age. Adapted from the original work, which evinces anxiety about science and technology leading to world war and mass murder.
American director Lydia STEIER will direct this new work, noted for her work on Die Zauberflöte at the 2018 Salzburg Festival. Conducting will be our Artistic Director of Opera, ONO Kazushi. Following on from Asters, universally acclaimed by Japanese and international media, the NNTT, is proud to present the world with this opera by a Japanese composer. No opera, music or drama fan should miss the advent of this work.
Message from Composer
This opera is out of this world as it is a dream, but it is also incredibly relevant to today. It's like a mirror.
When ONO Kazushi emailed me out of the blue, asking to commission my 3rd opera for full chorus and symphony orchestra, he asked for a story with contemporary relevance.
I thought that H.G. Wells' short story was a perfect grist for the work.
The story, written well before the first and second world wars, is about a totalitarian world at war which is described through a conversation between strangers on a train.
I was immediately hooked by this story, as for 20 years, my librettist collaborator and I have wanted to make an opera starting from a scene on a commuter train!
We never made that opera, not only because we were 20-year old's who had no possibility of a commission, but also because we couldn't fully decide what would happen after the initial train-conversation.
Now I have an offer, AND the short story starts from a train conversation which turns into the story of a dream which is oddly prescient.
With this project, I collaborated with Librettist Harry Ross who I have worked with for over 20 years for so many of my vocal works, and director Lydia Steier. We have all been trying to find a project to collaborate on for several years, as I feel her vision will give my music wings.
In this work the chorus changes from a train of commuters into a bloodthirsty army. The chorus predicts a possible future for us all...
All of the dramatic scenes move in and out of a dreamscape. You're never sure what is fact and what is imagined. There's a futuristic moving corridor, and future music in a dance hall which is, according to HG Wells, indescribable. Dynamic characters inhabit this future dream world, and their emotional, political views are sung out over a lyrical story line.
It had to be an opera It had to be a dream, one from which I hope we wake up.
FUJIKURA Dai
Message from the Librettist
Armageddon approaches.
As a British school boy I grew up with H.G. Wells. He is a quintessentially English author, and although visionary, he is a also product of his time. When writing Armageddon in 1901 the British Empire and English exceptionalism were at their zenith. Universal suffrage was almost three decades in the future.
Society can move backwards as well as forwards. Britain has embraced an authoritarian populism which looks recidivistically to the exceptionalism of a violent empire. How did this happen? We are all to blame.
I based this Armageddon on my own thoughts of how we, as "liberal elite" may be directly responsible for an impending Armageddon, thanks to our own inaction and bubble living. We live in froth.
Bella and Cooper are well-off people who have agency, they might be politicians, they might not. The point is that we might see something of ourselves there. In Dai and my version Bella is the daughter of an elite politician. In HG Wells' original Cooper is a politician who has given everything up for love. The fact is that their lives are so out of step with the majority of other people that something has to give, regardless of how well intentioned they are and how much they love each other.
Bella is based on a real person I once knew in the early thousands, who was a squatting anarchist activist. She was also the daughter of a wealthy and influential businessman. She's no longer an activist...
When populace is whipped into a frenzy by a demagogue, it is like being in a bad dream. Reality bends and chaos supersedes logic. All are harmed. I spent three years as a part-time soldier. People get persuaded to behave in shocking ways. My father was a full-time soldier, and was witness to the awful events in the Balkans, and in Ireland. Both happened in my adult lifetime, and having seemingly slipped from our collective memories, seem possible once again. As I write this the UK government seems prepared to break both the Good Friday Agreement and the EU Withdrawal Agreement, in order to drive its authoritarian nationalist agenda forward.
Dai and I made political parallels to several different schools of thought, aiming for a surreal timelessness in these parts. However, these demagogic threnodies are still rooted in the exact language of today. We live in a world of decontextualized soundbites. Take Back Control, In This Together, For the Many not the Few - the UK's current descent into nationalist exceptionalism has been moulded to some extent by the phatic language of modern politics. We are all to blame.
I was writing this work in the aftermath of the Grenfell Fire, the tower-block which burned down as a result of the greed and negligence of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, who are being investigated for the manslaughter of 72 citizens. I didn't experience this in the abstract. I was there. I lost colleagues and friends in the ongoing fall-out from such a devastating and avoidable incident, which continues to scar the consciousness of all who were touched by it. In fact, I was employed by the Borough's arts service at the time. Having heard for years the pleas of residents for equality and agency, the incident left me feeling like the community arts wing of the Death Star. The point is that no matter how good our individual actions might be we have to zoom out of ourselves and consider what whole we are a part of.
It felt like a war zone. A war started by froth and negligence.
Have I run from this, like Cooper and Bella?
I wrote this libretto on a boat in Rotterdam, in self-imposed exile from a country I no longer recognized. I now split my time between the Scottish Highlands, the Netherlands and London, torn in my responsibilities and fearful that the apocalypse will follow me wherever I go. This too is privilege. There are other poets whom the apocalypse has followed more closely. Rest in power Abdel Wahab Yousif aka Latinos, who drowned in the North Sea, stuck between The EU's burning migrant camps and The UK's Hostile Environment.
For me, A Dream of Armageddon is our ever possible future, a future accelerated by populism, weak politicians and inactive bubble-living urbanites. Cooper's dream gives him pause to consider this. And in seven decades, when we're all dead, these conditions will probably come around again, and we will dream anew.
Harry Ross
Feijenoord, Rotterdam,The Netherland
December 2018
Revised, Lossiemouth, Morayshire, Scotland
October 2020
Message from Director
What is our obligation to act in the face of great injustice? Is it really ever possible to remain neutral in a time of political upheaval? Do we have the right to hide in our private spheres when the temperature of public discourse swings toward the totalitarian? These are questions we could easily ask ourselves now in our world of fake news, volatile political alliances and a seemingly inexorable descent into chaos.
These are also precisely the questions at the heart of our opera A Dream of Armageddon, based on H.G. Well's short story of the same name originally published in 1901. The parallels to our time are alarmingly thought-provoking.
Wells's short story traces the experiences of a man, ravaged by dreams in which he serves as the proverbial frog in the pot of water: in a dystopian dream-world where a military dictatorship threatens to take absolute power the protagonist, formerly a powerful politician in this dream, chooses to do nothing. The narrator's dream-avatar ends up losing all he loves and even his own life over the course of the story.
Dai Fujikura's sweeping new interpretation of this story strengthens this work's mandate that we, as a society, examine our own inertia and complicity in the political sphere. Using quotes from our own era of societal dysfunction, librettist Harry Ross makes it clear that this Dream of Armageddon is not far away from our reality at all.
This production is created by the team behind Opernwelt's 2016 Production of the Year--Karlheinz Stockhausen's Donnerstag aus Licht at the Theater Basel. Using advanced video technologies combined with bold set design, the production creates a universe where realities can shift back and forth, and reflections of both ourselves and of our dark potentialities live in constant dramatic tension.
Lydia STEIER
Recorded on 5 November, 2020.
NEWS & FEATURES
Opera "A Dream of Armageddon" had its World Premiere
Interview: Lydia Steier on "A Dream of Armageddon"
Interview: FUJIKURA Dai on "A Dream of Armageddon"
[Notice] Additional Ticket Sales following the Lifting of Audience Size Limits & Tickets for the Performances from November Onwards
[COVID-19] Our Prevention Plan and Request to Our Patrons (updated on 13 March)
SYNOPSIS
Fortnum Roscoe, a young tax lawyer, sits opposite Cooper Hedon on a commuter train heading to a big city. Cooper sees that Fortnum is reading a book about dreams, and tries to share the details of his own recurring dream with Fortnum, who becomes ever more frustrated with Cooper's interruption to his morning reading. Cooper shares his theory that dreams and reality are not mixed, since he was killed in his recurring dream which felt so real that he felt conscious while dreaming. Much to Fortnum's irritation, Cooper expands on this alternate dream life.
He explains how he was living a life devoid of responsibility with his partner Bella, in a secluded, luxury compound. One night, whilst at its cabaret, the Inspector of the new totalitarian regime The Circle; disrupts the evening. Terrified of the threat of war, the attendees are persuaded to join The Circle after listening to a speech by its leader Johnson Evesham. Bella tries to confront the Inspector, and ends up having to run into hiding with Cooper. Bella desperately tries to convince Cooper to join the resistance against Johnson. Cooper is not convinced. Suddenly, huge planes and battleships approach, and bombing begins. Bella is shot in crossfire and bleeds out in Cooper's arms.
VIDEO
CREATIVE TEAM & CAST
CREATIVE TEAM
Libretto by: Harry ROSS
(after the short story “A Dream of Armageddon“
by H.G.WELLS)
Composed by: FUJIKURA Dai
Conductor: ONO Kazushi
Production: Lydia STEIER
Set Design: Barbara EHNES
Costume Design: Ursula KUDRNA
Lighting Design: Olaf FREESE
Video: Christopher KONDEK
Dramaturg: Maurice LENHARD
CAST
Cooper Hedon: Peter TANTSITS
Fortnum Roscoe/Johnson Evesham: Seth CARICO
Bella Loggia: Jessica ASZODI
The Inspector: KANOH Etsuko
The Singer/The Cynic: MOCHIZUKI Tetsuya
Chorus: New National Theatre Chorus
Orchestra: Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra
- CREATIVE TEAM
- CAST
-
Composed by
FUJIKURA Dai
Libretto byHarry ROSS
ConductorONO Kazushi
ProductionLydia STEIER
-
Cooper Hedon
Peter TANTSITS
Fortnum Roscoe /Johnson EveshamSeth CARICO
Bella LoggiaJessica ASZODI
The InspectorKANOH Etsuko
The Singer / The CynicMOCHIZUKI Tetsuya
TICKETS
-
S¥22,000
-
A¥16,500
-
B¥11,000
-
C¥6,600
-
D¥3,300
-
Z¥1,650
Box Office: +81-(0)3-5352-9999
10:00 - 18:00
Booking Opens: Sat, 7 Nov 2020, 10:00am
*Following the easing of government guideline concerning capacity, the tickets will be sold for all seats as normal (except the seats in rows 1-3 on the 1st Floor). (Update on the 24th of September)
*Please note that further changes or cancellations may be required as the coronavirus situation develops or to comply with requests from the Government.
Booking Z seats (Day tickets) 1,650 yen
You are able to purchase Z seat tickets online from 10:00 am. Click "BUY TICKETS" next to "Z" under each performance information. There is a handling charge of ¥330 (incl. tax).
Only when seats allocated as Z seat are still available 2 hours before the show starts, you are able to purchase these tickets at the Box Office of the theatre. Note that all Z seats are on a first come, first served basis and will come with restricted views.
Concession Prices
Under 15s discounts and Z seats (Day Tickets) are available online. Other types of discount tickets are not available online. Please inquire at the Box Office or by telephone.
Please Note
- No admittance to pre-school children. Each child older than this age requires a ticket for entry, even when accompanied by a parent or guardian.
- In case you correspond to the conditions as mentioned on this page or if you choose not to attend the performance due to prevent infection, please be sure to call the New National Theatre, Tokyo Box Office in advance.
At that point, we will tell you the Refund method. - A special discount price is available for disabled guests. Please inquire at the Box Office for details.
- Users of wheelchairs are requested to contact the Box Office.