The celebrated British composer Rebecca Saunders, known for her uncompromising and sonically meticulous music, will premiere her first opera, LASH Acts of Love – Love, Mute, Loss!, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin 20 June 2025. A commission by the company, the work features a libretto co-written by Saunders and the British visual artist and writer Ed Atkins, and is directed by the Irish theatre collective Dead Centre. Enno Poppe conducts the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
The premiere will be followed by performances on 27 June and 1, 11, and 18 July.
A major figure in contemporary music, Saunders was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2024 Venice Music Biennale. Her compositions have long explored the relationship between sound, body, and space, often working with limited pitch material and complex timbral textures. LASH marks a new chapter in her artistic career: an opera in three acts—Love, Mute, and Loss—written for four performers embodying one fractured consciousness in the wake of death.
According to the official synopsis by the Deutsche Oper, the work “recounts fantasies and memories of love and loss and fucking and sickness, kissing, eyeballs, genitals, fingertips, lips and lashes—each scoured for consoling significance to hold back death’s meaninglessness.”
Saunders composed the work with specific artists in mind. Soprano Anna Prohaska, contralto Noa Frenkel, soprano Sarah Maria Sun, and actress Katja Kolm each represent facets of a single protagonist navigating a terrain of grief, sensuality, and memory. The singers and performer shift between spoken word, recitation, and extended vocal techniques in a structure that avoids linear storytelling in favour of sensorial and psychological fragmentation.
The libretto, written in English, is the first operatic collaboration between Saunders and Atkins. Known for his emotionally charged video work, Atkins shares with Saunders a fascination for the interplay between the corporeal and the ephemeral.
The musical fabric of LASH reflects Saunders’ deep engagement with the physicality of sound. Her score includes electric guitar and two analogue Korg synthesizers, in addition to the orchestra. Rather than relying on prerecorded electronics, all effects are performed live—emphasizing the composer’s commitment to the tactile and performative nature of sound.
Spatiality also plays a central role: in the final act, music is spread across the auditorium, and speakers placed in the upper levels of the theatre enhance the immersive quality. “I spread the music throughout the entire theatre. The soloists return from the grave and perform a duet with the singers on the stage,” Saunders explained in an interview with Tobi Müller for the Deutsche Oper Berlin website.
Each of the four performers contributes a distinct vocal and theatrical identity. Anna Prohaska notes that her part blends Monteverdi-style ornamentation with experimental techniques: “To that extent Rebecca is doing similar to what Mozart and Verdi did in writing roles with individual singers in mind.” Sarah Maria Sun describes the score as “like nothing I’ve ever seen or heard or read before,” while Noa Frenkel reflects on the intensely embodied nature of the music: “Rebecca’s music is made to be lived, not just sung.” For Katja Kolm, the work’s poetic abstraction demanded a new level of interpretive precision: “LASH is about a woman who splits her personality four ways: four voices, four personas, all in a psychological state of emergency.”
Visually, the production promises a striking contrast between abstraction and intimacy. Dead Centre’s staging incorporates large-scale projections by video artist Sébastien Dupouey—eyelashes, skin flakes, and other bodily details blown up to fill the stage. Nina Wetzel (set and costume design) and Jörg Schuchardt (lighting design) complete the creative team.
Staged without intermission, LASH runs approximately two hours. Performances include German and English surtitles, and a pre-performance lecture (in German) takes place 45 minutes before each show.
“For a long time, I didn’t dare write for human voices,” Saunders told Müller. “But I came to learn that instruments are just solo voices for me. And vice versa.”
“I write by hand: big sheets of paper, pencil, ruler, rubber… That’s all I need,” she added when describing her process. In LASH, that solitary work now meets the collective act of performance.
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