Plans for Future Operas
a song cycle for soprano, piano/keyboard and projected drawings

Øyvind Torvund: composition, text, drawings
Juliet Fraser: soprano
Mark Knoop: piano, keyboard, technical

In this piece, the audience is presented with a series of ambitious, large scale plans for operas, impossible to realize, with ideas that defy the laws of physics and acoustics. Many of the ideas centre around the themes of communicating with the past, with people in other rooms and other dimensions. The plans are presented with drawings and sketches, simple animation and text projected on a screen. The live music by soprano and keyboard/piano is expanded with pre-recorded material and electronics. The expression is intended to be open, unfinished, with the sketch as the main form, leaving the final result in the imagination of the audience.

Commissioned by Münchener Biennale für Neues Musiktheater. Duration: 50 minutes

Press

The gorgeous performance by Juliet Fraser (soprano) and Mark Knoop (piano) came as close to a stand-up comedy show as contemporary music performance ever could. … The excellent vocal performance not only critically inquires into the future of contemporary opera. It also delivers answers. The future of opera lies in artistic collaboration, friendships, and ongoing conversations between composer and performer who dare to laugh and dream together.

— Monika Zyła, Glissando, 3 June 2023

A similar playfulness pervaded the Norwegian composer Oyvind Torvund’s imaginative Plans for Future Operas, performed by the soprano Juliet Fraser and the pianist Mark Knoop. … the duo conveyed, with gusto and evident amusement, Torvund’s freewheeling musical language.

— Jennifer Gersten, The New York Times, 23 March 2023

The whole thing is built with wit and at the same time very cleverly and quite complex… A fun performance and a pretty great project.

— Jörn Florian Fuchs, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 13 May 2022

This is much more than a delightful whim, it goes to the heart of music theatre. Because Torvund deals with music, especially when it becomes theatrical, as a communication phenomenon.

— Egbert Tholl, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 May 2022