Death and the Powers Trailer

Death and the Powers: A Robot Pageant is a new opera by composer Tod Machover at the MIT Media Lab, in collaboration with the American Repertory Theater. It is a one-act, full evening work that tells the story of Simon Powers, a successful and powerful businessman and inventor, who wants to go beyond the bounds of humanity. Reaching the end of his life, Powers faces the question of his legacy: "When I die, what remains? What will I leave behind? What can I control? What can I perpetuate?" He is now conducting the last experiment of his life, passing from one form of existence to another in an effort to project himself into the future. Whether or not he is actually alive is a question. Simon Powers is himself now a System. His family, friends and associates must decide what this means, how it affects them, and whether to follow.

New performance technologies for Death and the Powers are being developed at the MIT Media Lab, including a new technique of Disembodied Performance to translate Simon's offstage performance into an expressively animated stage. Other novel "instruments" include a Musical Chandelier and a chorus of robots.



"New Robot Opera Explodes Boundaries
Death and the Powers, a groundbreaking new opera created by Tod Machover with his Opera of the Future Group at the MIT Media Lab, is to receive its world premiere September 24, 2010 at l'Opéra de Monte-Carlo, with additional performances on September 25 and 26. The opera's fusion of live singers and "disembodied performance" technology makes it "the Avatar of the opera world," enthuses the popular technology blog GearLog."
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/09/prweb4527384.htm

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Death
• and
• the
• Powers
• Tod
• Machover
• electronic
• robotic
• opera
• electro
• robot
• evvy

[akrauss100]

This will go down in music history as a pivotal piece in the development of the genre. Sometimes those pieces aren't the best, but break through to a new style. He has opened the door.

[virgildisgrace]

I can't help but feel like the vocal tradition of Opera just doesn't have anything to do with this work. It just seems distracting and overwrought, but... to each her own.

[zenocomplex]

@KojiroTakenashi I'd suggest you read more about this opera--the plot isn't paramount.  What's important is the way in which it utilizes live technology to contribute to storytelling. Really, nothing else like this does exist.

Tron was a cool movie, but it wasn't much but a CG sci-fi romp. The music was tasteful for the genre, but it wasn't made by professional composers, it was made by pop songwriters. Not that I'm hating on Tron, but this opera was written for a very different purpose

[dreamwaves2rg]

i think the music and "techno" imagery are great - opera needs more of this 'fusion" (a Wagnerian-style mega vision "uploaded' into the 21st century) so that more people can "connect" to this powerful musical and dramatic medium.....

[KojiroTakenashi]

To be fair, we kind of already have this. It's called TRON. The sequel had very good music.

Not to dig on it, but the instrumentation could use a lot of work. Despite that I love this sort of thing - obviously since I just referenced TRON: Legacy - it just doesn't seem to have a very good sound. I don't know if I'd sit through the whole thing.

[Farfromhere001]

WTF?