Divining Opera is a cycle of performances created by Lynn Book, transmedia performance artist and Gina Crusco, Artistic Director of Underworld Productions Opera Ensemble, New York, NY, USA Collaborators include contemporary composer Katharina Klement, Vienna, Austria and New York media artist Robin Starbuck.

A historically-informed performance of Rameau’s opera “Hippolyte et Aricie” will be twinned with “FROTH: Future Archaeologies of Love and Power”, Book’s original transmedia counter-performance for extended voice, electronics, multi-lingual text and video. Book performs the figure of the chimera as a catalyst to summon up new hybrid embodiments of encounter and meaning for a 21st century global landscape.

On Evening 3, “The Annotated Hippolyte et Aricie” will be presented, in which FROTH will be embedded within the scenic and dramatic frame of the opera, and include a “supervideo” that offers audiences participatory status in the construction of the performance experience.

Timetable
The 2009-2010 season will include a 20 minute preview performance of “The Annotated Hippolyte et Aricie” as a work-in-progress showing at the Thalia Theater, Symphony Space, New York City, May 13, 2010.

The 2010-2011 season in New York includes concerts with preview performances TBD from “The Annotated Hippolyte et Aricie” and “FROTH or Future Archeologies of Love and Power.”

“Divining Opera” in its full three-evening incarnation, will premiere in April 2012.

Other projects associated with DO include a performance and video installation project for an international arts festival in Ptuj, Slovenia, July 2010 and a short feature video produced by Robin Starbuck and Lynn Book for single channel screening at film and video festivals TBD.