Music by Olga Neuwirth
Libretto by Elfriede Jelinek
After the film by David Lynch

Frankfurt Opera
Bockenheimer Depot 
Frankfurt, Germany
September 2018

Director: Yuval Sharon
Conductor: Karsten Januschke
Set, Video, and Lighting Designer: Jason H. Thompson
Live Electronics: Markus Noisternig and Gilbert Nouno
Video: Norbert Ommer
Costume Designer: Doey Lüthi
Dramaturgy: Stephanie Schulze

The Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth and German writer Elfriede Jelinek based this opera, first performed in 2003, on David Lynch's film, a fascinating combination of psychothriller, horror, and film noir. Throughout the "case study of a person who cannot cope with his fate" (Barry Gifford) runs very ambitious storytelling, which constantly leads to dead ends. Scene changes are feverish, time and space unstable, as are identities and sound worlds. Neuwirth's score is intermedial and full of complex notation: fadeouts are altered sound spaces, lavish live electronics and varied vocal expression are confronted with visual dimensions. 

Sharon’s production both enhances the piece’s inherent sense of uneasy and layered non-reality and embraces its cinematic roots. Using a split stage, Sharon employs green screens to insert live singers into a projected video setting inspired by Lynch’s film. Joining them are actors dressed entirely in green fabric, whose visible actions within the “real” setting hold a mysterious influence on the “virtual” layer. The result is a piece as multidimensional and inscrutable as its source material, wrapped in a layer of illusion that Musical America called "not only technically superb but astonishingly effective as theater."

Photography by Monika Rittershaus.