The operatic plot in four acts takes place in 4 town buses that are changed through ornaments of mirror glass and light into visually exciting objects that interact with their surroundings while they travel through the city or country side on a defined route.

Sketch by Gisela Weimann

Based on the experience with a mirror installation that I realized in the summer of 1997 as part of the Los Angeles County Museum's project "Windows on Wilshire" I envisage a visual and acoustic dialogue between the buses, the neighbouring houses and windows and the passers by.

The opera will not follow an obvious story line but develop in an abstract way like a soliloquoy of changing sentiments and emotions expressed by noises, sounds, familiar melodies and colours and forms. Voices and singing that may appear like a libretto remain largely unintelligible. The concept symbolizes the continuos circular course of confrontation and necessary dialogue between reality and dream and the inner and outer world. This is further accentuated by the structure of the opera that is conceived as an interactive aleatoric continuum.

Each bus represents one act of about 15 minutes. The audience moves from one bus to the next during an imaginary European journey. The four stops of the buses will be included into the visual and acoustic plot. The buses form a mobile and autonomous 'theatre' which allows the opera to be performed in the most diverse places.

The visual concept is based on the different formal and rhythmic patterns of mirror strips that will be attached to the inside and outside of the windows and body of the buses. Along the route of the buses mirror strips and patterns may also be applied on shop fronts and windows of some houses thus forming a new infinite and disorientating design when they drive by. Inside the buses an unreal reality and space is created by mirrors reflecting mirrors and the view through in between spaces of window glass onto the partly altered, partly normal life outside. This double game of reflection and transparency fragments the viewers and reality and gives them different dimensions in space. The performance should begin after dawn. An additional visual attraction is the play with light and projection from the inside of the buses to the outside and vice versa, including street lamps and traffic lights. The multitude of reflexes and reflections mix with images of real life around. The activities inside the buses could also be projeted onto the rear windows of the buses via video cameras and beamers or onto walls and sreens at certain points of the journey.

The proposed concept is subject to change according to the conditions on location

Gisela Weimann,
Idea and Audio-Visual Concept, Berlin, 1999/2000