Admin

New National Theatre Tokyo

Conductor

Conductor (+1)

Kazushi Ono

Chorus

New National Theatre Chorus

Orchestra

Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra

Stage director

Stage director (+2)

Christian Räth

Soprano (+2)

Ilse Eerens

Natasha

Mezzo-soprano

Hiroka Yamashita

Arato

Baritone (+3)

Christian Miedl

Mephistos Enkel

New National Theatre

Set designer

Daniel Unger

Costume designer

Costume designer (+1)

Mattie Ullrich

Lighting designer

Rick Fisher

Video

Clemens Walter

Sound designer

Arima Sumihisa

Choreographer

Catherine Galasso

Chorusmaster

Chorusmaster (+1)

Kyôhei Tomihira

Soprano (+1)

Mari Moriya

Frau A

Soprano

Akiko Tomihira

Frau B

Bass

Tang Jun Bo

Chinese businessman

Saxophonist

Masanori Oishi

Guitarist

Gaku Yamada

Electric Guitar

This new opera work by Hosokawa Toshio is staged as the third in Artistic Director Ono's series of commissioned works from Japanese composers. Hosokawa Toshio is a leading composer of contemporary music who has created commissioned work for the world's major orchestras, musical festivals and opera houses. Natasha is the first opera by Hosokawa to be staged at the NNTT since Matsukaze in 2018, as well as his second opera to be world premiered by Ono Kazushi, the first being Hanjo, commissioned by the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, in 2004.

Reconsidering the relationship between humans and nature, Hosokawa Toshio's music is a kind of prayer or requiem. Especially after the 2011 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake, his works address humans' repetitive history of destruction, drawing particular attention to nature's fearsomeness and to the human arrogance of forgetting the awe nature deserves. Globally acclaimed author Tawada Yoko, who writes novels in both Japanese and German that examine the world from a German base and highlight themes of national borders and languages, is working on the libretto for the new work. The story focuses on an encounter between Natasha, a wandering immigrant driven out of her hometown, and a young man named Arato, as well as a Mephistopheles-like figure who shows and leads the pair through various scenes of human hells. Multilingual with Japanese, German and Ukrainian languages, the opera compares and contrasts the origins of modern civilization and humanity. The groans of the endangered earth resonate deeply throughout this opera that depicts destruction and hope with multiculturalism as the key to finding a path forward.

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