Kopernikus Online

Please note the new date. This concert was originally scheduled for October 29.

This concert will be streamed on this page.

In 2018, Americas Society's vocal ensemble Meridionalis premiered a new production of Claude Vivier's chamber opera  Kopernikus with live video by Sergio Policicchio in Buenos Aires. (It was also the South American premiere of the piece.) Alongside the International Contemporary Ensemble, the group performed the New York premiere of the piece the following year. For this virtual concert, Policicchio prepared an online version with live music from the May 2019 concert in New York. 

In what Vivier described as a "ritual opera of death," the central character—a young woman named Agni—descends into a dreamworld where "mystical beings borrowed from stories gravitate around her." 

The composer writes about Kopernikus:

"The main character is Agni. Around her revolve several historical mythic beings (portrayed by the six other singers): Lewis Carroll, Merlin, a witch, the Queen of the Night, a blind prophet, an old monk, Tristan and Isolde, Mozart, the Master of the high seas, Copernicus, and his mother. These characters might just be Agni’s dreams that guide her in her initiation and ultimately in her dematerialization.
Strictly speaking, there is no story but rather a series of scenes in which Agni evolves towards total purification as she ultimately reaches a state of Pure Spirit.
The poetry of Kopernikus relies at once on the keen sensitivity of the composer, on his relationship with his childhood and on the different articulative levels of these various oneiric elements. The work is, in effect, a meditation on various poetic and cultural states, but a distancing occurs as soon as the different articulative levels come into play. The composer, faced with such creative issues could only write the texts himself.
I want art to be a sacred act, the revelation of forces, the communication with those forces. The musician should no longer perform music but organize sessions of discovery, seances that invoke the forces of nature, forces that existed, exist, and will continue to exist, forces that are the Truth. The true goal of any real revolution is to set a civilization that has detached itself back on the path of these forces. Become a priest, organize ceremonies dedicated to these forces, find the soul of humanity, and return it to itself, force the individual to face himself and to face infinity, before the total mystery that is The Universe, contemplate it, ultimately locate oneself within it. Organize revelations in which the performers are the priests and the composer is the medium. Start again at the beginning, really set the world right, rediscover sensitivity. “The world is getting ready for a huge change, would you like to participate?” (The Mother). 
Humanity will find its place. It will stop gazing at its navel and will feel the infinity that surrounds it. Art will no longer be the sweet panacea that we apply to a wounded body, it will be the body..."

This production, commissioned by the Festival Nueva Ópera de Buenos Aires, premiered at the Planetario Galileo Galilei in Buenos Aires in 2018.