©Rikimaru Hotta/New National Theatre, Tokyo

A tour of the hells of 2025

A multilingual space rises from the sea

I attended the world premiere of Natasha on August 15, exactly 80 years after World War II ended with the surrender of Japan. At first glance, this appears to be a typical case of a work being named after one of its characters, which is not at all uncommon in opera. Natasha, however, differs from convention in that it depicts current social issues rather than being a love story centered around the character Natasha.

Before the performance, I visited the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and the National Archives of Japan at Takebashi, then the Shokei-kan (“Historical Materials Hall for the Wounded and Sick Retired Soldiers”) in Kudan-Kita, hopping between exhibitions on the war. I also took the opportunity to observe the situation at Yasukuni Shrine, which was incredibly crowded on the day. Heavy security was in place, but by the time I got there, the politicians’ visits had already concluded. Heading straight from Yasukuni to the New National Theatre, I was taken aback by the unusually high number of foreign audience members and how drastically the crowd composition differed from place to place. While Yasukuni serves as the symbol of a nation unable to settle its own wartime responsibility, the contemporary opera Natasha examines, by way of a journey through hell, the ongoing ravages of war and disasters worldwide, as well as the environmental destruction sustained by all of humanity. The origins of the work date back to 2019, when artistic director Kazushi Ono first approached composer Toshio Hosokawa. The Covid-19 pandemic intervened, so the premiere being scheduled for summer 2025 might be coincidental, but personally, I find the timing intriguing. Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai is currently underway. While the Expo of 1970 highlighted artists like Iannis Xenakis and Toru Takemitsu, bringing contemporary music to the general public, the fact that this year’s event lacks any pavilions featuring such avant-garde artists has concerned me.

©Rikimaru Hotta/New National Theatre, Tokyo

The work opens with scenes of the primordial sea, the source of life. According to Hosokawa, this image evokes Genesis while also representing the birthplace of language. A choir whispers the word “sea” in over 30 languages, its sound enveloping the hall. Electronic sound designer Sumihisa Arima had over 20 speakers placed across three tiers in the auditorium, creating a three-dimensional soundscape that conjures up a striking vision. Though lacking any rhythmic structure, it feels like the very beginning of the art of music. Enter Natasha, an immigrant who has fled war-torn Ukraine to Germany, and Arato, presumably a former resident of Fukushima, Japan, who lost his mother and hometown to the earthquake and tsunami. The former speaks Ukrainian and German; the latter, Japanese. As I usually watch opera with one eye on the subtitles, I was struck by the strange experience of Japanese words I could understand without translation occasionally slipping into my ears. It seems only natural that the libretto was written by Yoko Tawada, a novelist noted for her use of multiple languages. Coming from different backgrounds, the two characters cannot understand each other’s words, but through music, they connect emotionally. Reviewing the libretto, I came across a scene where Arato repeats Natasha’s German lines as sound.

©Rikimaru Hotta/New National Theatre, Tokyo

Languages including English, French, and Chinese are also used in the work, such as in a scene where poems are recited in overlapping layers across eight languages. Rather than translating into another language or consolidating into a single one—like having a Nagasaki woman and an American sing together in Italian—Natasha allows disparate tongues to coexist as they are. In Japan, where anti-immigrant sentiment is growing stronger, the significance of this experimental multilingual opera is profound. Furthermore, in the “Business Hell” scene on the tour of hells the characters undertake, Japanese onomatopoeia like jara-jara (“jingle-jangle”) and bari-bari (“crunchy”) are employed to great effect. Notably, the relationship between Natasha and Arato is not the romantic love between a man and a woman that traditional opera often focuses on. Performed by a soprano (Ilse Eerens, who has sung in several of Hosokawa’s past works) and a mezzo-soprano (Hiroka Yamashita), the dynamic here is different from the cross-dressing roles of works such as Der Rosenkavalier, expressing a more universal form of love. While genders aren’t explicitly defined, Arato is no macho man, his portrayal more reminiscent of an adolescent.

Beyond the landscapes of hell

Following Dante’s Divine Comedy, the two protagonists experience seven levels of hell unfolding in dizzying fashion, guided by the grandson of Mephistopheles (baritone Christian Miedl). First up is the “Forest Hell,” a deforested forest. Next is the “Pleasure Hell,” where global capitalism propagates desire. Here, in a sea polluted with plastic, an improvisational piece on the electric guitar and saxophone is accompanied by two pop singers (sopranos Mari Moriya and Akiko Tomihira) and a choir clad in plastic costumes. The third is the “Flood Hell,” where one is swallowed by huge waves; followed by the “Business Hell,” set in an office with a skyscraper exterior as its backdrop; the “Swamp Hell,” where demonstrators protesting environmental destruction clamor for revolution; the all-consuming “Burning Hell”; and finally, the “Drought Hell,” resembling a parched desert.While the themes are all serious, the dramatic scenes alternate rapidly, making for a visually engaging experience. This is further enhanced by the sound design, which features a wide variety of elements beyond so-called contemporary music—including rock-style sounds, synthesizers, noise, vinyl scratches, minimal music, silence, and various sounds recorded around the world, such as that of water—each highlighting the distinct character of the respective hells. Given that these scenes encompass elements like water and fire, they evoke the structure of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which incorporates Masonic initiation rites based on the four elements.

©Rikimaru Hotta/New National Theatre, Tokyo

©Rikimaru Hotta/New National Theatre, Tokyo

In any case, what’s interesting is that these “hells” are not depictions of the afterlife, representing rather the very reality we live in. This aspect is apparent not only in the imagery of modern cities and offices in “Business Hell,” but also in the nuclear power plant projected prominently on a screen in “Swamp Hell.” One might criticize the work’s portrayal of social issues as somewhat stereotypical, but that doesn’t mean obscure abstraction is preferable. The program booklet contains a piece by Tawada presented as responses to a (presumably) fictional email interview by a journalist from “Country X.” Both opera and anime start with the appearance of characters, and, I quote: “The atmosphere generated by the costumes and the scenery in the background is surprisingly important. At first, they appear a bit stereotypical, unguarded… That simple, doll-like concreteness lined up before your eyes is still necessary. It’s about colors, shapes. Only once the audience’s eyes settle does the complex depth of each individual get expressed through voice and music.” In any case, for me, the “Burning Hell” witnessed afterward—though the script offered no such explanation—appeared exactly like the aftermath of an atomic bombing.

©Rikimaru Hotta/New National Theatre, Tokyo

©Rikimaru Hotta/New National Theatre, Tokyo

For an architecture specialist like myself, Christian Räth’s production and set design, along with Clemens Walter’s video design, were truly remarkable. What surprised me the most was that while I had assumed such a rich narrative would require rather elaborate set design, hardly any three-dimensional objects are used. The set consists of a large screen covering the entire space, plus tall, vertical screens extending slightly sideways at the top and bottom that slide left and right to form a multilayered arrangement. The changing formations of these screens, combined with projected imagery and rising and falling horizontal platforms, establish the narrative’s backdrop. For example, by changing the combination of the vertical elements, Räth and his team are able to evoke the depth of a whirlpool in the “Flood Hell,” gates and underpasses in the “Swamp Hell,” and the shape of a mushroom cloud in the “Burning Hell.” In other words, spatial expression is achieved through multilayered screens and projected imagery.

©Rikimaru Hotta/New National Theatre, Tokyo

The final scene is almost dreamlike in its beauty. Having reached the very depths of hell, the two encounter an inverted pyramid. This references Botticelli’s funnel-shaped The Map of Hell (c. 1490), but it is also an inverted Tower of Babel. From that moment, the world is purified by water. The inverted pyramid reflected on the water’s surface flips, transforming into a pyramid rendered by light and smoke. Natasha and Arato sing, “What can we see from here?” The beginning of a new world, perhaps. This opera masterfully employs immaterial stage design.   A world that seemed headed for peace after the end of the Cold War in the late twentieth century has plunged back into chaos with Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s attacks on Gaza, the American president’s authoritarian behavior, and the rise of xenophobic movements worldwide. And due to the effects of global warming, the summer heat in Japan is more severe than ever. The vision presented at the end of the new opera Natasha may be utopian, but in 2025 it feels like a sincere plea; a prayer in response to our circumstances.

©Rikimaru Hotta/New National Theatre, Tokyo

Translated by Ilmari Saarinen