Japan Society Announces 2022-2023 Musical Performance Season

Japan Society has announced its Fall 2022-Winter 2023 season of concert performances with in-person programs focused on traditional and modern works, spanning the disciplines of opera, film, Noh theater, puppetry, and prose.

Leading up to the North American premiere at NYC Skirball of the internationally-acclaimed contemporary opera Yukio Mishima's Hanjo, based on one of Mishima's Modern Noh Plays as adapted by prominent Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa, Japan Society hosts an artist talk and sneak preview on September 14. Founder of New York Catapult Opera Neal Goren (also Hanjo's conductor) and director Luca Veggetti reveal their inspirations in the staging of this hopeless, mad-love romance. The evening begins with an introduction to Mishima's original script by Professor Satoko Naito and culminates with a live performance of the opera's centerpiece aria.

On November 10, puppet artist extraordinaire Basil Twist discusses his creative role in the Royal Shakespeare Company's upcoming musical staging of the beloved Studio Ghibli animated feature film, My Neighbour Totoro, in collaboration with Improbable and Nippon TV. Twist is known for surprising audiences with his infinite creativity, from 88 magical Japanese screen doors (Dogugaeshi) and dancing fabrics in an onstage water tank (Symphonie Fantastique) to a gigantic rock creature in his most recent work (Book of Mountains & Seas). In this event, Twist will share backstage images and describe the process of creating real-life versions of the film's fantastical creatures for the live staging of My Neighbour Totoro set to premiere at London's Barbican this fall. On November 4 at 7:00pm, Japan Society will hold a special 35mm subtitled screening of the animeTotoro.

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang has taken up the challenge of Japan Society's commission of a new chamber opera by combining and reimagining three texts by novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa, widely regarded as the father of the Japanese short story. Making its world premiere on January 12 through 15, note to a friend, a co-production from Japan Society and Tokyo Bunka Kainan, will be a part of PROTOTYPE Festival 2023. The work is a stunningly haunting monodrama that addresses our eternal human fascinations with death, love, family, and suicide. Paris-based opera director and longtime member of Peter Brook's international theater company Yoshi Oida directs and the mercurial New York vocalist Theo Bleckmann stars.

Japan Society's Artistic Director Yoko Shioya says, "We are excited to introduce these highlights from an exceptional performing arts season, filled with magical music borne out of an amalgamation of Japanese and American imagination. Beginning with source material born from Japan - literature, history, animation - each of these works begin with an Eastern point of origination, but have blossomed into unique and powerful projects via the contributions of Japanese and non-Japanese artists alike. We can't wait to share these events with our audiences."

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