Stilles Meer - Silent Sea

The impact of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami on Fukushima in Japan is unquantifiable in human terms and surely a challenge for any artistic endeavour, but that is exactly what Toshio Hosokawa attempts to do in his opera Stilles Meer - Silent Sea, written for the Hamburg Opera in 2016.Using natural sounds and the rhythms of the sea, along with the turbulence that it can also give rise to, the music and the stage set give an impression of nature and technology sitting uneasily side by side. A platform leads down to a patch of blue sea that is covered with a circular glass framework that suggests the shape of a nuclear reactor. Rods hang down from the sky instead of clouds. The impression, matching the mood created by Hosokawa's music, is that everything has changed, all that is natural has been altered and distorted.The human story that takes place in this environment is also one where the composer and librettist attempt a fusion of ideas and cultures in order to get across the deeper impact of the disaster on people's lives. Claudia's 12 year old son Max died when the tsunami struck the coast of Japan and his body has never been found among the debris that continues to be washed ashore. Haruko believes that Claudia might be able to find a way to relate to what has happened through her love for the Noh play Sumidagawa, a play about a mother who has also lost her child to the sea. Chanting a Buddhist prayer the mother is able to take her grief into another dimension and Haruko hopes that Claudia might similarly be able to begin the grieving process on this same level.Essentially, Stilles Meer is itself an attempt to collectively take the suffering of Fukushima to another dimension where it can be processed, and evidently that is through the transformative process of art in music and opera. Hosokawa makes good use of silence and stillness to achieve that, using the rhythms of nature and the sea. The music rises and falls and maintains a low background presence even in the quieter moments. This allows room for reflection, which is also the role to a large extent of the other members of the Fukushima fishing community heard in the opera. There is indeed something of a tone of an oratorio or a requiem about the opera in these passages, a respect even for the power of the sea and a wariness of technology that would be instilled in the people who live there.The rather more unpredictable side of the sea and the devastation that it can cause is there in the voices of the principal singers. Bejun Mehta is as sweetly voiced as ever, but the real intense dramatic performances come from Susanne Elmark as Claudia and Mihoko Fujimura as Haruko. Whether Stilles Meer achieves what it sets out to is difficult to say, but it's an ambitious work that addresses the issues around a significant terrible real-world event. There might not be a sense of resolution or complete closure at the end of Stilles Meer, but there is an indication in Hosokawa's work that there's a deeper learning and healing process to follow and that the process must necessarily be an on-going one.

The impact of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami on Fukushima in Japan is unquantifiable in human terms and surely a challenge for any artistic endeavour, but that is exactly what Toshio Hosokawa attempts to do in his opera Stilles Meer - Silent Sea, written for the Hamburg Opera in 2016.Using natural sounds and the rhythms of the sea, along with the turbulence that it can also give rise to, the music and the stage set give an impression of nature and technology sitting uneasily side by side. A platform leads down to a patch of blue sea that is covered with a circular glass framework that suggests the shape of a nuclear reactor. Rods hang down from the sky instead of clouds. The impression, matching the mood created by Hosokawa's music, is that everything has changed, all that is natural has been altered and distorted.The human story that takes place in this environment is also one where the composer and librettist attempt a fusion of ideas and cultures in order to get across the deeper impact of the disaster on people's lives. Claudia's 12 year old son Max died when the tsunami struck the coast of Japan and his body has never been found among the debris that continues to be washed ashore. Haruko believes that Claudia might be able to find a way to relate to what has happened through her love for the Noh play Sumidagawa, a play about a mother who has also lost her child to the sea. Chanting a Buddhist prayer the mother is able to take her grief into another dimension and Haruko hopes that Claudia might similarly be able to begin the grieving process on this same level.Essentially, Stilles Meer is itself an attempt to collectively take the suffering of Fukushima to another dimension where it can be processed, and evidently that is through the transformative process of art in music and opera. Hosokawa makes good use of silence and stillness to achieve that, using the rhythms of nature and the sea. The music rises and falls and maintains a low background presence even in the quieter moments. This allows room for reflection, which is also the role to a large extent of the other members of the Fukushima fishing community heard in the opera. There is indeed something of a tone of an oratorio or a requiem about the opera in these passages, a respect even for the power of the sea and a wariness of technology that would be instilled in the people who live there.The rather more unpredictable side of the sea and the devastation that it can cause is there in the voices of the principal singers. Bejun Mehta is as sweetly voiced as ever, but the real intense dramatic performances come from Susanne Elmark as Claudia and Mihoko Fujimura as Haruko. Whether Stilles Meer achieves what it sets out to is difficult to say, but it's an ambitious work that addresses the issues around a significant terrible real-world event. There might not be a sense of resolution or complete closure at the end of Stilles Meer, but there is an indication in Hosokawa's work that there's a deeper learning and healing process to follow and that the process must necessarily be an on-going one.

Quite good if you are into minimalist music

Je viens de recevoir ma commande. Tout était très bien. Merci.Je suis sure que vias aimer cet opera.Luis Cilia