NYU Skirball Theater, New York
January 24, 2018

“What if a piece were so quiet and so intimate and so personal to the performers that you needed to be right next to them or you would hear almost nothing?” That is the intriguing premise for The Whisper Opera, the latest boundary challenging work from Pulitzer Prize winner and Bang on a Can founder David Lang. An antidote to the easily available, eminently snackable music grabs that are on offer nowadays via the internet, the piece is designed to combat our sedentary stay at home tendencies. A work with a score stating that it may never be recorded, or filmed, or amplified demands that we get off our backsides and experience it live. So far, so good.

Alice Teyssier (voice) and Chris Gross (cello) in The Whisper Opera. Photo © Ian Douglas

Entering the Skirball auditorium, the first thing question that arises is where do we sit? On the stage, that’s where. The modest set, draped in white gauze like a microscopic corner of heaven (direction and design are by Jim Findlay), has a mere 52 seats distributed across eight trenches....