A.  a shadow opera  (2001)

One man, polyphonous

A.  is an opera without voices singing.
A.  is an opera in which the human voice, and the words it produces, constitute          the fundamental material of the composition. 
A.  is an opera in which a silenced body is alone on stage: a body with                      movements and actions, but without words.
A.  is an opera for voices and metal.
A.  is a shadow opera:

the voice as the acoustic shadow of the body, a tracing of the shadow pattern of human actions: the shadows of history which fall across every moment, and the shadow of the present, extended into the unknown terrain of what is to come

the wordless body as a shadow play and a surface on which to project the movements of the disembodied voices – reflections, echoes, repetitions, remnants, fragments, retakes, transformations, openings and possibilities, or interruption and closure: a tentative transport of potential meaning 

a music theatre which exists somewhere in between the shadows of a four hundred-year-old art form 

A. is one man polyphonous. The historical or mythical Agamemnon is the point of departure, but other times and other entities gradually appear, adding new layers to an identity which is constantly split and reunited and refracted again in the echo of a radical renunciation of responsibility.  A. is a voice which tries to encompass something of a magnitude far greater than what the voice can contain. Towards the shadows of that which is incomprehensible and inaccessible,  A. is moving, like a shadow. 

Paal-Helge Haugen

Cecilie Ore