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A concert that felt timely enough to be a newspaper, with new and recent pieces on war, technology and remembrance.

Does opera have room for film? And live video? Multiple screens and advertorials? And allusions to onscreen identity and cyber-immortality?

In his 2016 opera Blank Out, Dutch composer Michel van der Aa has managed to create a new kind of operatic ‘reality’ that resonates powerfully with today’s Zeitgeist. Highly recommended.

Soprano Miah Persson is the riveting protagonist in Michel van der Aa’s genre-crossing new opera, a fascinating revisiting of a tragic event.

Auckland Chamber Orchestra’s stunningly played “Voice of the Whale” concert featured 20th-century and contemporary works, including pieces by George Crumb, Michel van der Aa and John Adams.

Monday evening at Lincoln Center’s annual White Light Festival, audience-goers were sucked into the multi-media universe of Michel van der Aa. The concert, which featured four of Mr. van der Aa’s compositions, took place in the darkened ballroom of the Manhattan Center, running to a bit over an hour with no intermission. Three solo works, each about ten minutes long, were paired with the U.S.

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the phrase “3D occult mystery film opera”? Because I’ll bet that whatever this makes you imagine is nothing like the reality of composer/director Michel van der Aa and librettist David Mitchell’s Sunken Garden, which debuted at the Barbican last night.

Imagine that Britney Spears is in the final throes of life. She stages one last concert to bid farewell to her fans, but is too mentally unstable to make it work. Her former lover Justin Timberlake appears onstage and attempts to win back her affections. Everything happens in slow motion, perhaps because Britney is undergoing a sort of psychotic breakdown.

This wasn't just another concert. It was Liebestod, a truly unique exploration of Berg's Lyric Suite. Berg's piece is a compelling work, whose mysteries were only revealed about twenty years ago when the composer's letters to his lover Hanna Fuchs-Robettin were released. Both were married, and the relationship was fraught with secrecy.

Das Ensemble Insomnio fasziniert mit Werken von Francesconi bis Van der Aa.

Michel van der Aa zwingt das Publikum, sich mit der zukünftigen Möglichkeit, ewiges Lebens mittels AGI zu gewinnen, auseinanderzusetzen.