Sunken Garden

A fantastical tale to set the ears and eyes popping

A provocative combination of live performance and cinema, fused in subtle and arresting ways[…]the fusion worked here because of the rigor with which Mr. van der Aa assembled all of its parts; the brilliance demonstrated by dozens of collaborators and technical colleagues; and the excellence the singers and actors brought to their tasks, onstage and on screen.
Mr. van der Aa links the musical and cinematic components of “Sunken Garden” deftly and intricately. Subtle hints advancing the mysterious plot are quietly strewn throughout the filmed sequences. Elements in the score link up precisely with details on screen.
Mr. Mitchell’s chatty dialogue unspools naturally, flowing in lyrical strands over bruised harmonies, fidgeting rhythms and patches of haunted stasis, played by a 26-piece orchestra augmented with subtle electronic effects. A filmed scene depicting Amber in a nightclub is set to convincingly kinetic dance music.
The opera’s three live singers, unobtrusively amplified to match their on-screen counterparts, were superb.
[…] unquestionably a bold, rewarding venture that demands consideration.
—New York Times, Steve Smith, 16 April 2013

Strikingly effective

Van der Aa has directed the show as well as the often sumptious-looking film sequences. As always he’s done it with immense technical skill, and both his orchestral writing and the electronic soundtrack are strikingly effective.
—The Guardian, Andrew Clements, 14 April 2013

Sometimes brilliant and always perplexing

What’s really remarkable about it is the way it all comes together. The first section alternates live, sung action with spoken video clips which are to be part of Toby’s film. The sunken garden itself, filmed at the Eden Project in Cornwall, is in a remarkable 3D, with the “missing” characters holograms within it and the other characters live on the stage, though sometimes interacting (or trying to) with the holograms. It’s a trippy experience, but on occasion a breathtaking one, and the technological aspects have been very firmly welded into the dramatic concept, ensuring that claims of gimmickry are easy to refute.
The score isn’t just a box of tricks: it’s dramatic at times, almost traditional at others (the vocal writing especially), and always carefully attuned to the text. It’s also virtuosically diverse: van der Aa is renowned for his eclecticism, but he really outdoes himself here. Most impressive for me were the sections of music depicting Amber, a rich student with a fondness for clubbing: van der Aa blends elements of dance music into his score with astonishing effectiveness and sincerity.
…a truly remarkable artwork which deserves to be seen and heard, and which merits the attention it’s already received.
—Bachtrack, Paul Kilbey, 13 April 2013

A Gesammstkunstwerk for the age of technology

Sunken Garden is altogether more ambitious, and successfully achieves van der Aa’s dreams of linking different art forms to create a Gesammstkunstwerk for the age of technology. It will divide opinion, however, as anything truly experimental usually does. Much will be made of its technological inventiveness, but don’t be distracted. At heart, ‘Sunken Garden’ is a true opera in the deepest sense. It’s about people and how they communicate, or don’t communicate as the case may be.
Don’t be distracted by the complex plot…Nothing seems to make sense, yet there’s a crazy sense of momentum, such as one finds in dreams…The 3D effects aren’t a gimmick but an intelligent theatrical commentary.

Van der Aa’s Sunken Garden is so different that it would be a miracle if everyone could respond to it in the same way. But perhaps the secret is to enter its strange world on its own terms. In the real world, we communicate in many different ways other than through words alone. We listen to all kinds of verbal and non verbal signals, and we use visual and subconscious images. Sunken Garden is good opera because it transports us into an artist’s vision and makes us engage with our feelings.
— Opera Today, Anne Ozorio, 14 April 2013

3D film and opera combine to magical effect

I witnessed a truly effective fusion of art forms to create what I can best describe as both an opera and a film, where the whole film-opera is a dramatic conception…Sunken Garden is a genuine multi-media piece of art, embracing 3D cinema drama.
This is a clever as well as complex piece of work, with a fiendishly complicated plot, and Roderick Williams, Katherine Manley and Claron McFadden, the three well-chosen on-stage singers, deliver it with aplomb.
This is real drama and it works dramatically. The mystery is as complex as TV film noir. The spoken interviews work as film and the 3D successfully drew me right in to the sunken garden. Crucially, Sunken Garden works as opera, with van der Aa’s fusion of musical styles matching the fusion of mediums.
—Gramophone, Antony Craig, 18 April 2013

A remarkable fusion of sound and visuals

…a remarkable fusion of sound and visuals, complete with stunning 3D imagery. Described as a “film opera”, the Sunken Garden certainly stretches the boundaries of the genre.
—Evening Standard

I have seen the future. It works.

Let me tempt fate and proclaim without hesitation that Michel van der Aa’s opera, Sunken Garden, which opened Friday in London, is the first genuine 21st century opera.
Few new operas address the fundamental question of what an 18th century art form is supposed to do in the 21st. Sunken Garden does exactly that. Taking a libretto by fantasy writer David Mitchell, it employs every known device of stage technology and invents several more in order to give the audience as sense of being both there, and simultaneously elsewhere.
The singers, on stage and off, were sensational, Roderick Williams, Claron McFadden and Kate Miller-Heidke above all. André de Ridder conducted, Theun Mosk was the designer, and the show will go on to Lyon, the Holland Festival, Toronto and far further afield. Such has been the word of mouth on this work in progress that no fewer than 40 festival directors flew in to attend the premiere.
If enough of them share my perception that Sunken Garden has cracked the riddle of opera in the 21st century, stand by for more productions that employ its mind-bending, deeply unsettling technology right across the repertoire.
I have seen the future. It works.
—Slipped Disk/Sky news, Norman Lebrecht, 12 April 2013

Powerful arias

A sudden change of mood and pace occurred when McGovern’s character, Simon, sings a lament for his baby, a cot death victim. This was a powerful aria: one of opera’s most traditional ingredients leapt out of all the hypertech and cyberworld frippery and ambushed us completely, no 3D specs required. Yearning and weeping, his suffering was all the more piercing for its control and lyricism. A duet, another standard operatic form, later had a similar power.
—The Observer, Fiona Maddocks, 20 April 2013