FULL NATASHA (Toshio Hosokawa) Tokyo 2025 Ilse Eerens, Hiroka Yamashita, Christian Miedl, Mari Moriya

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: Natasha  
• Composer: Hosokawa Toshio   
• Libretto: Yoko Tawada    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: New National Theatre Tokyo NNTT, Tokyo, Japan  
• Recorded: August 17, 2025
• Type: Staged Opera Live
• Singers: Ilse Eerens, Hiroka Yamashita, Christian Miedl, Mari Moriya, Akiko Tomihira, Jun Bo Tang
• Conductor: Kazushi Ono  
• Orchestra: Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra  
• Chorus: New National Theatre Chorus  
• Chorus Master: Kyohei Tomihira  
• Choreographer: Catherine Galasso  
• Stage Director: Christian Räth  
• Stage Designer: Christian Räth, Daniel Unger  
• Costume Designer: Mattie Ullrich  
• Lighting Designer: Rick Fisher  

Information about the Recording

• Published by: OperaVision  
• Date Published: 2025  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs  

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

This new opera work by Hosokawa Toshio is staged as the third in Artistic Director Ono’s series of commissioned works from Japanese composers. Hosokawa Toshio is a leading composer of contemporary music who has created commissioned work for the world’s major orchestras, musical festivals and opera houses. Natasha is the first opera by Hosokawa to be staged at the NNTT since Matsukaze in 2018, as well as his second opera to be world premiered by Ono Kazushi, the first being Hanjo, commissioned by the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, in 2004.

Reconsidering the relationship between humans and nature, Hosokawa Toshio’s music is a kind of prayer or requiem. Especially after the 2011 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake, his works address humans’ repetitive history of destruction, drawing particular attention to nature’s fearsomeness and to the human arrogance of forgetting the awe nature deserves. Globally acclaimed author Tawada Yoko, who writes novels in both Japanese and German that examine the world from a German base and highlight themes of national borders and languages, is working on the libretto for the new work. The story focuses on an encounter between Natasha, a wandering immigrant driven out of her hometown, and a young man named Arato, as well as a Mephistopheles-like figure who shows and leads the pair through various scenes of human hells. Multilingual with Japanese, German and Ukrainian languages, the opera compares and contrasts the origins of modern civilization and humanity. The groans of the endangered earth resonate deeply throughout this opera that depicts destruction and hope with multiculturalism as the key to finding a path forward.

Synopsis

Moaning of the sea and the universe. Arato is searching for an entrance to the underworld. He visits a beach and meets a woman, Natasha, who has left her homeland. Although Arato and Natasha do not speak the same language, they are able to convey their names. Suddenly a strange figure appears, introducing himself as the grandson of Mephistopheles, and he guides Arato and Natasha through various hells of our time.

Quoted from NNTT

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