From silence to noise – that is how the Babel story of the Bible might be described.
In opera Babel, we shall narrate the story backwards, from end to start, providing a chance to mentally rewind the entire process and to imagine how the mixing of languages might have sounded.
In the opera, the action proceeds from noise to silence. Entire musical fabric is woven from language, even the noise heard in electronic part is merely a very densely processed and modified human voice (imagine the choir of entire nation).
Babel is a mystery opera of the 21st century about the dethroning of pride, where the key accent is placed on the sound of language blending.
In the Bible (Genesis 11) we find a reference to the Tower of Babel (Ziggurat): “Then the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar (Babylonia) and settled there. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”