Séisme
Séisme is a digital installation opera conceived collaboratively by director Franciska Éry, poet Ar Guens Jean Mary and composer Alex Ho. It is a reflection on the fragile and destructive relationship between humans and the Earth, and a reflection of our continuing failure to heal this relationship. Centred on Jean Mary's vivid texts that abstract the tactile, physical and seismic bonds connecting us to each other and to the ground beneath us, Séisme reminds us that we are not alone in this mortal existence.
Ho is a man in demand and his score for Séisme indicates why... insidiously bold and evoked seismic disturbances in sounds that were quite without cliché... The elegiac beauty of his writing for the 40 voices of Montpellier's Opéra Junior, expressive music devoid of condescension or simplification, was a highlight of the work.
- Opera Magazine, May 2024 (full review)
The experience is captivating, daring, accomplished, coherent, based on the richness of the poem-libretto, non-narrative, pictorial, sensual...Although using relatively modest means...the soundtrack is of undeniable beauty. Alex Ho's composition does not fail to seduce. In addition to the concrete sounds generated by the spectators' walking, the children are the first voices to be heard, chanting in unison, dubbed by the instruments. The effect is magical. Renewed, enriched, this process of vocal unisons doubled by the musicians, punctuated by percussion, contributes to this powerful dreamlike climate...
- Forumopera (full review in French)
An ecological fable that surprises and questions
- France TV (full programme in French)
...a lyrical, immersive and digital experience. Will the future of opera be written with new technologies?
- Radio France (full programme in French)
COMPOSITION: Alex Ho
TEXT: Ar Guens Jean Mary
DIRECTION: Franciska Éry
LIGHT DESIGN: Mathieu Cabanes
VIDEO DESIGN: Kati Katona
SOUND DESIGN: Julien Guillamat
ILLUSTRATIONS: Kiihwan Lim
Conductor: Ka Hou Fan & Jérôme Pillement
Soprano: Hwanyoo Lee
Bass: Albert Alcaraz
With the children's choir and musicians of Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier
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Year: 2024
Instrumentation: Soprano, Bass, Children's choir, 3 trombones, 3 percussionists, 4 double basses
Duration: 45'
Premiered at: Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier
Produced by: Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier
Supported by: Diaphonique, the Friends of the French Institute Trust, the French Institute of the United Kingdom, the French Institute, the Center National de la Musique, the British Council, Culture Ireland and the Salabert Foundation, Radio Nova
Other: Shortlisted for the FEDORA Digital Prize 2023
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