Ming Tsao: Die Geisterinsel

Die Geisterinsel, a chamber opera based on Shakespeare’s Tempest, reworks an opera with the same title by Johann Rudolph Zumsteeg, a contemporary of Mozart. Ming Tsao transcribes Zumsteeg’s music in such a way that ‘noise’ infiltrates the original music that continually moves between the refined Classical style of Zumsteeg and the noises of the island where The Tempest is set. Tsao’s intention is to use noise to create a compact musical space in which irregular rhythmic forces twist and deform the Classical phrasing of progression so that a new kind of lyricism can surface.