Bare Opera and CultureHub Present New Virtual Reality Opera Livestream, THE PRESENCE OF ODRADEK

After an online world premiere last weekend attended by over 700 viewers worldwide, Bare Opera will present three more livestream performances of Exercises on The Presence of Odradek on Sunday, May 24, 2020.

Directed by Malena Dayen, conducted and composed by David Rosenmeyer, designed by Sangmin Chae and choreographed by Troy Ogilvie, The Presence of Odradek is a new experimental opera based on Franz Kafka's The Cares of a Family Man that combines dance and opera with interactive technology. James Mowdy of Opera Innovation called the new opera a "revelation," noting that "it felt like we were experiencing, in real time, a vital next step for opera." On Sunday, May 24, 2020 Bare Opera will again stream three separate, live, online video performances to accommodate viewers around the world. The livestreams will occur at 0800 (8AM), 1400 (2PM), and 1900 (7PM) EDT.

Playing with Kafka's text and with poems by Avot Yeshurun, the work explores how art is able to give presence to an absence. Absence fills our world - ghosts of ancestors, secrets untold, and emotions too big for the conscious mind to process find in this performance a space to exist, without renouncing their absence-ness.

David Rosenmeyer created the piece for soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, a chamber orchestra, and pre-recorded material. Improvisations by singers around the world and Lotte Lenya's recorded telling of Kafka are combined with live performance in a beautiful, catchy, and haunting score.a??

Stage director and acclaimed mezzo-soprano Malena Dayen returns to Bare Opera after her last two sold-out productions - Piazzolla's Maria de Buenos Aires and Mozart's Don Giovanni - with another immersive production that challenges and expands the idea of what opera can be in the socially distant world we find ourselves in.

Technology and video artist Sangmin Chae designed the show using evocative projections and virtual reality technology to allow the audience to see the artists perform live from home and at the same time feel as if they were onstage exploring the scenes themselves.

Exercises on The Presence of Odradek will be streamed on Sunday, May 24, 2020 at 0800 (8AM), 1400 (2PM), and 1900 (7PM) EDT. To RSVP or learn more, please visit http://www.bareopera.org/odradek.

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