MEDIATHEK

'Triptych' is an experimental opera in three parts, scored for an ensemble company of five singers and electronics, with video projections. Loosely structured on Puccini’s 'Il Trittico,' it is comprised of a comedy, a tragedy, and a piece about nuns. Each section was created in collaboration with a different composer.

'Triptych' uses a range of virtuosic vocal and ensemble musical techniques, technological devices, and a theatrical language that is both experimental and accessible, to construct three contrasting pieces which share themes of obsession, alienation and the limits of communication:

I. Reunion (music by Christian Mason): A young nun’s past, present and future are superimposed in the moment of her investiture ceremony, stripping back the events that lead to this life-changing transformation.

II. A Party (music by Thomas Smetryns): A comedy of manners patched together from vinyl recordings of 1950s English language lessons, this plunderphonic fantasy conjures up an absurdist cocktail party that gradually descends into mayhem.

III. The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered (music by Christopher Mayo): Through a mosaic of tessellating narratives, the events surrounding the mysterious disappearance of an architectural photographer are reconstructed.

All three composers employ pre-recorded speech within the electronic elements that accompany the singers. These fragments of speech are used variously as narrative frames, artefacts, live manipulated instruments, scores, sonic textures, metacommentary and aural supertitles. In combination with live singers, movement and video, this ‘found’ speech is central to the new approach that each piece takes to creating narrative in music theatre, and to the deconstruction of the ‘operatic’ synthesis of linguistic, musical and visual signs.

'Triptych' was devised as part of ERRATICA’s collaborative creation process. Using our ensemble opera company of singers trained in group improvisation and physical theatre, the piece was developed through an extended workshop process, in which composers, writers and performers explored material together.