Uitkrant, Amsterdam, February 2002 monthly cultural magazine

Behind the Scenes of a Contemporary Opera

Marion Schrooten

"This is the Noah of today", you think immediately during the flood of projections, animations, classic and electronic music that wash over you from the start of this piece. The Noahs, a climatic tale is a modern opera, an idea by visual artist Nikki Lindt.

The storyline of the biblical tale, Noah's Ark, is recognizable in the opera The Noahs, a climatic tale, but the themes and production design are retold in a present-day context. Issues like the environment, global warming and genetic experimentation are the cause of the Great Flood, year 2002. Barren earth, wild waters and bright red DNA strands fill the 5 meter high screen. These are designed by the Americain raised visual Artist Nikki Lindt, among other functions; initiator and producer of the opera.

In recent years Lindt has designed sets and 3-dimensional buildings for commercials and feature films, including De Lift by Dick Maas. Lindt's concentration on the environment is as deep-rooted as her artistic ambitions: "It is unbelievable how much essential nature is disappearing. Most people readily accept this with just a few soothing words by politicians. I am not part of any political party nor am I an environmental activist but I do strive for more public awareness. Opera is a fantastic medium to express ideas. Imagery can have a much larger impact than words. A series of 80 painted portraits brought about this production, which I made last summer walking through Amsterdam. You constantly see people looking at each other in public and reacting to each other in gesture and expression. I wanted to capture this in my paintings. The series was so successful that I wanted more. The rediscovery of a CD by Benjamin Britten was the next step on the way to this production. This is how the idea of an opera in which my portraits and imagery would have a voice came about. During a workshop in Brussels I met composer Sophia Serghi. It clicked immediately. She lives and works in Cyprus, but that has not caused any problem."

Lindt designed a storyboard with her designs which she describes as a "minimal graphic style". Technician Marcel Dolman took the part of animating some of the imagery thus bringing about a dramatic film-like production.

Dancing Buildings

In the beautifully renovated theater Pompoen, the first tryouts are taking place. Only in the very last stadium do the singers Elly Casdas and Manolis Papadakis (together with DJ Radion) arrive and take their place on stage. A month before the premier the costume design is finished but at this moment all the energy and time is going into the creative fine-tuning and technical aspects of the opera. There are enough technicians walking around at Pompoen but the possibilities are limited. "Hmmm, Isn't the image too high? Hold on, let me see if I can find something to raise the beamer with" calls an employee.

A striking part of the production are the scenes of the "Dancing Buildings". They are made with a computer program, normally used by architects /engineers to find the weak spots of a building. Because the weak parts change color as the buildings move the buildings look like they are dancing. "This is an idea I came up with half a year ago," emphasizes Lindt, "But of course in the meantime these images have taken on more meaning."

The speed in which the images move across the screen is vital for the opera. "Too fast, that's not human anymore!" calls Lindt. "The text sung by the singers has to work simultaneously with the speed of the movements within the animation and the portraits on the screen."

Though there are numerous technical challenges, the human factor dominates this production. God has a desire to gamble, and Mrs. Noah says "No!" at once when her love asks her to take part in his "relocation" project.

Producer, director, concept and imagery: Nikki Lindt, libretto: Tomas, composer: Sophia Serghi