Brown University recently issued the following announcement.
The Department of Music presents a screening of Amber Vistein’s opera-film Dark Exhalation Thursday, March 24 at 8pm in Martinos Auditorium at the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts. Vistein is a PhD candidate in Music & Multimedia Composition, and Dark Exhalation is her dissertation project. Visuals in the film were created by Ben Aron. Admission to this event is free and open to the public. A brief Q+A with the composer follows the film. Masks are optional. To learn more about Amber Vistein, visit her website.
Dark Exhalation
Dark Exhalation is a new opera-film for four vocalists and ensemble (flute, clarinet, violin, viola, cello, double bass, percussion) that incorporates cinematic sound design to create an immersive audio-visual experience.
At its heart, this evening-length work explores the generative possibilities of fragility. The events of the opera unfold in an urban environment sometime in the not too distant future. We find each character dealing with some form of isolation: grief, loneliness, or addiction. Each is fragile in their own way. When a massive solar storm is detected, and found to be rapidly speeding towards the Earth, they each map their personal situations and vulnerabilities onto the events of the cosmos; interpreting cosmic happenings as representative of their individual struggles: a solar flare is a dead lover’s rage, a tide of dying birds is a man’s broken heart, and the roiling plasma of the solar surface is the restless blood of someone suffering substance withdrawal.
When the solar storm arrives, it causes a blackout that extends for hundreds of miles. Food, gas, and medicine shortages quickly follow. But in the wake of the storm’s destruction, radically altered circumstances allow unexpected connections to blossom. Ultimately, Dark Exhalation is a narrative of care, a care inspired by the mutual fragility that we all share: extending from the sub-personal through to the personal, societal, and cosmic.
Original source can be found here.
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