Okay, now we’re talking.  This one is solid.  Now we have an opera about something that matters.  No old-fashioned romances, no second-rate kings, no wacky mistaken identities.

This is about the destruction of environment, and it is serious.

Give these guys a lot of credit for stepping up and upsetting the viewers.  I’m not sure I want to use an airplane again, or even drive to the office. 

No, things are collapsing here on this planet, and I get to decide.  Maybe been a little too comfortable; a bit too quiet.  Message received.  Several billion people who will live here in 2050 are asking me for help.  The honeybee population can’t ask; those little fellows are just dying quietly.

What a piece of art this is.  They tie together the old story of Cassandra, who warned about destruction but was ignored, and present-day climate scientists who are delivering better-supported warnings, also with limited success.

How are you going to make a 2023 audience listen to that?  Well, you can build it into a completely believable “weird family story”, and an appealing young romance, and bring in your own realistic shouting right-wing critics.

Then you make the serious scientist speak as a sardonic stand-up comedian, go with the mobile phones and video tech, and make the audience listen very carefully to the ice sheet cracking and breaking forever.

And you speak and sing in English.  Right here, guys, right now.  Skip the translations and the mystery.  The science people are talking directly to me.

Is this an opera?  Sure, I guess, because it was staged by Le Monnaie / Die Munt in Brussels in September and it’s up on OperaVision.  You have your music, your singers, and your evocative sets.  And it’s an evening of stage entertainment, as long as you can handle a show that scares you quite deeply, about your future.

This Canadian stage artist Matthew Jocelyn has it pretty much nailed, with the story and the script, the sets and direction make the themes and the message stand out.  Can’t look away.

And then you have the Belgian composer Bernard Foccroulle with the music.  I cannot understand or appreciate any of this music, however.  It goes along with the emotional tone of the action and delivery, maybe?  I kept trying to listen to see what was there for me, but this sounds like odd noises, something a modern musicologist would love. 

To me, it doesn’t get in the way, and I’m thinking, if this were just a stage play, I probably wouldn’t have watched it, so, good.  But this is no Rossini; not the bel canto arias and choruses I rely on.  What a delightful change of pace!  Moving forward!  New, different, and challenging.

Got my attention.  Too bad about my airplane tickets and my gas car.  Getting a little too hot in here for that.