Honey, Moon! is a hybrid of opera and installation of living sculptures, construed of sounds and human bodies. Instrumentalists, singers and bodybuilders are all moving on a different scale – from micro to cosmo. When man and planet, the living and inanimate worlds entwine together. On a micro level, the contractions of bodybuilders’ muscles are recorded by special electrodes. At the same time, the performers rotate on moving platforms, while the spectators are walking around, experiencing an authentic impression of sounds and imagery.
Chamber ensemble, collages of surrounding sounds, vocal ensemble and narrators are like audio planets, existing together and separately. Each sound source builds a particularly fragile layer of musical texture; they interweave together to connect into a single flashing musical fabric.
The bodybuilders are nearly naked, while the rotating platforms with musicians are covered in veil with imprinted imaginary surfaces of planets. Surfaces of performers’ and instruments’ bodies simultaneously turn into cosmic landscapes and wedding dresses. They are moving in the orbits of soundscapes and the listeners may enter them at any time. Interplanetary route is open. Honey, the Moon, honeymoon… Honey, Moon!
What will happen to the genre of the opera when we catapult it into space? Or onto the Moon? Before answering, we first need to authorize a neologism combining the terms “interspecific” and “interplanetary”. This opera is a dramatization of such a neologism.
Director and installation author Julijonas Urbonas
It is a contemporary, mystical dramatic journey, an allegory of the quest for one’s other side and the discovery of himself/herself in any possible form – love, self-acceptance, illumination – on the Moon. Honey, Moon! is a kind of continuous journey, like hitch-hiking in a wedding dress and getting into vehicles of different experiences.
Author of the libretto Gabrielė Labanauskaitė
The opera score features electroacoustic and live music. The chamber ensemble, the collage of records of the surroundings, the modular synthesizer, the vocal ensemble, and the readers are like modules, or audio-planets that exist together and separately. Each of the sound sources builds a particularly fragile layer of musical texture, they interweave with each other and come together into a single flashing musical fabric of changing repetition.
Composer Gailė Griciūtė
PLOT
Scene 1
Once upon a time, a human Creature who never left her room dreams of a silver cell and leaves her parents’ house.
Scene 2
She travels to the megapolis, where she meets the monster of poetry, feeding on the blood of others. They converse and move on.
Scene 3
The Creature visits contemporary art centre, where she encounters many titles (yes, the titles) of contemporary art works.
Scene 4
The Creature enters church and contemplates on the location of hell.
Scene 5
On the day of erotic, the Creature enters gents restroom, where she experiences…
Scene 6
Contemplating existential questions, the Creature sees moonlight, even though darkness has descended upon the pyramids in Egypt.
Scene 7
Her mother calls and the Creature informs her that she is getting married to the …Moon.