Chaosmos – a Musical Fable in three acts (after Gilles Deleuze and Lewis Carroll) (2008-2011)
Soloists: 2 sopranos, mezzo Soprano, 2 tenors, baritone, bass; 8 voice choir, divided: SSATB+ATB
instrumentation: 1 1 2 1 - 2 1 1 0, 3 percussion celesta (harmonium), guitar, harp, accordion, piano, 6 vln, 2 vla, 2 vc, 1 cb
Duration: 110’
James Joyce’s neologism lends its name to this opera about the enormous and enormously random network of thoughts, actions and words in which humans struggle daily to make sense. This, nearly-two-hour, musical work overlays two separate but essentially intertwined schemas for attempting to organize the chaotic universe: 34 paradoxes borrowed from Gilles Deleuze’s book, The Logic of Sense, and the stories of Lewis Carroll. As the dramatic action follows the broad arch of Carroll’s 19th-century works, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, the audience is confronted by familiar situations and characters of an almost mythological stature, whose interactions hold the key for unraveling Deleuze’s musings on what sense might be. This - at first unlikely - combination creates an, at times playfully absurd, at others frightfully real journey in which we might just discover something of ourselves – a voyage whose implications stretch far beyond any mere children’s tale.