A new opera that aims to place audiences inside the sound of an expanding universe is set for its Australian premiere at Hobart’s Theatre Royal this week.
VAST, composed by Tasmanian-born Constantine Koukias, will be performed on August 12 and 13 as part of the Beaker Street Festival.
The hour-long work uses a 360-degree spatial audio system with eight speaker channels to transform the theatre into what Koukias describes as “an observatory made of sound.”
The piece draws on the Nobel Prize-winning discovery that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, driven by dark energy – a force making up roughly 70% of the universe’s total energy.
Koukias, who now lives in Amsterdam, developed the work over three years with sound designer Willem van Erven Dorens.
It incorporates more than 120 voices and 80 instrumentalists sampled from Koukias’s earlier operas and concert works dating back to 1990.
“I want you to feel like you’re floating in the vastness of the universe,” Koukias said.
He said the piece builds in intensity throughout, mirroring the ever-accelerating expansion of the cosmos.
“The piece gets faster and faster and more intense as we get to the very end,” he said.
Koukias said returning to Hobart to stage the work held deep personal significance.
“It’s really special to be here,” he said.
Soprano Katharine Dain, who is visiting Australia for the first time from the Netherlands, said the collaboration in the rehearsal room had been vital.
“An opera like this is made from the people who put it together for the first time as much as anything else,” she said.
“A kind of magic happens in the rehearsal room.”
Dain said the electronic soundscape surrounding the live performers creates “this sense of something unending, something out of time, something that’s just unspeakably beautiful and almost incomprehensible.”
The production also features tenor Tyrone Landau, pianist Gabriella Smart and Tasmanian musicians Jennifer Owen and Yoram Levy.
Beaker Street Festival is Tasmania’s annual celebration of science and culture, running from August 6 to 17.
The festival, which is marking its 10th birthday, brings together scientists, artists, musicians, chefs and storytellers for two weeks of talks, performances, field trips, workshops and large-scale public events across the state.
VAST’s Australian premiere at the Theatre Royal is on August 12 and 13 at 8pm.
Tickets are available through the Theatre Royal website.
