the project

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such people in it!

William Shakespeare- The Tempest

BRAVE NEW WORLD is a contemporary opera project based on the book of the same name by Aldus Huxley, re-examining value systems of utopias vs dystopia and the different cultural interpretations this embodies, freedom versus happiness, the outsider vs. the insider, and a commentary on today's consumer driven society.

BRAVE NEW WORLD will integrate all the disciplines of live music, performance, design, theatre, dance, fashion and art together into one singular Gesammstkunstwerk, where the separate art forms are enhanced and strengthened by the other, where the whole is greater than the sum of all parts. A work driven by the music and the libretto but supported by a strong visual and physical performance, placing it in line with contemporary performance practice, with a strong awareness to current aesthetics.

Brave New World is one of the most bewitching and insidious works of literature ever written, and is a relevant today as when it was written in 1932.

Brave New World has come to serve as the false symbol for any regime of Univeral Happiness a topic which has profound resonances in today's society.

The Libretto draws upon the images created in the novel by Huxley and explores these images in the context of the contempoary society in europe. What was once Huxleys's nightmarish fantasy of the future society seems to become a manual of the present and sheds a blazing light on the politics of inter-human relations in the current world.
 

The project will be designed as a location project, rather than working in traditional theatres, allowing a more intimate and experiential performance for the viewers, who become active witness and participants in the event.

“...after the Age of Utopias came what we may call the American Age, lasting as long as the Boom. Men like Ford or Mond seemed to many to have solved the social riddle and made capitalism the common good. But it was not native to us; it went with a buoyant, not to say blatant optimism, which is not our negligent or negative optimism. Much more than Victorian righteousness, or even Victorian self-righteousness, that optimism has driven people into pessimism. For the Slump brought even more disillusionment than the War. A new bitterness, and a new bewilderment, ran through all social life, and was reflected in all literature and art. It was contemptuous, not only of the old Capitalism, but of the old Socialism. ”

BRAVE NEW WORLD examines how relevant is this statement today?

What is the difference between the outsider and the insider?

What is the difference between freedom and happiness?

What is the difference between utopias and dystopia?

What are the different cultural interpretations this embodies?

What are the differences between the consumerist societies and individual ideals?