Sivan Eldar celebrated great success in 2022 with the premiere of her first full-length chamber opera, Like Flesh at the Opéra de Lille. Unanimously praised by critics, the work, based on a libretto by playwright Cordelia Lynn, was awarded the prestigious Fedora Opera Prize.
As the central performance of the interdisciplinary festival Interfinity, the work will now be performed as a new production at the Voltahalle Basel. Inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, the plot centres on a woman who transforms herself into a tree, thereby distancing herself more and more from the fast pace of human life.
The dramaturgical and visual design was created by Dominique Pitoiset and Luca Scarzella. The opera is being developed in collaboration with biologists, botanists, environmental scientists and urban ecologists (ETH Zurich, University of Basel & NCCR Microbiomes) as well as the IRCAM Centre Pompidou Institute and uses scientific ‘intermezzi’ how forest and fungal systems and microbiomes work, what consequences dense sealing can have, and how biophilic and ecologically sustainable architecture can make cities more liveable.
Like the premiere, the media package released in summer 2025, consisting of a book and CD recorded with Maxime Pascal and his ensemble Le Balcon, was also enthusiastically received.
