SEAN BELL
Countertenor and Performance Artist
by Yuri Umemoto
crypt_ is a fictionalized tale about a young composer—an alter ego of composer Umemoto himself—who is drawn into a crypt beneath an old European church. The voices of four European noble spirits rise from the crypt, and at night the protagonist follows these voices down into the underground. There he begins to sing and comes into contact with Europe's past. Time and space begin to dissolve, and a multiverse emerges. The spirits turn out to be virtual illusions created by artificial intelligence—reconstructions of existing data. Through the singing between the protagonist, the spirits, and their virtual mirror images, a reflection on death, vanity, and the banality of existence unfolds.
Between European opera, Japanese ghost stories, anime, and artificial intelligence, crypt_ weaves the tale of “Hoichi the Earless” into a musical theater piece about creation, ambition, and identity.
Premiere: Münchener Biennale, 2026.
Composition, text: Yuri Umemoto, libretto: Gareth Mattey, stage direction: Ivar Furre Aam, musical direction: Christian Eggen, dramaturgy: Takuya Maehara, anime design: Kanji Okai, scenography consultant: Jakob Oredsson, costume design: Ingrid Torvund
Countertenor (lead): Sean Bell
Soprano: Peyee Chen
Tenor: Mathias Monrad Møller
Baritone: Halvor Festervoll Melien
Co-Production: Münchener Biennale and Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, Oslo Sinfonietta, Black Box teater Oslo and KLANG Festival Kopenhagen.
Photos: Frol Podlesnyi - Münchener Biennale
by Tze Yeung Ho
The complex story of a dowager empress – hailed as both moderniser and tyrant – Nara is a new chamber opera exploring power and ambiguity, diving deep into a fascinating moment of Chinese history, as centuries of Imperial rule was coming to an end. Drawing inspiration from his own heritage in Hong Kong, composer Tze Yeung Ho creates an operatic world that blends Chinese and Western classical elements, featuring musicians from Hong Kong alongside a cast of Nordic singers, including acclaimed mezzo Hege Høisæter and the multifaceted drag performer and composer Josh Spear.
Empress Dowager Cixi's life is steeped in contradictions. Often depicted as a cruel tyrant, she also moved China moderately towards reform. The opera circles around a moment at the very end of the 19th Century and her life, when Cixi attempted to ban the centuries old practice of foot binding – a brutal, crippling custom that altered the shape of women's feet to symbolise status and beauty. Today, historians are divided on both Cixi’s reputation and her motivations for reform, and the opera explores this space of contradiction in the legends of the Qing dynasty’s last influential ruler.
Premiere: Borealis festival for experimental music, 2025.
Composer: Tze Yeung Ho, conductor: Gunvald Ottesen, librettist: Linda Gabrielsen, stage director: Ellen Seligman, scenographer: Magnus Pind, choreographer: Emmi Pennanen, costume designer: Sofia Pantouvaki
Photos: M. Levi
Hong Kong New Music Ensemble, The Gong Strikes One
Hege Høisæter – Cixi (mezzo)
Mimesis Heidi Dahlsveen – On-Stage Narrator
Josh Spear – Katharine Carl
Sean Bell – An Dehai (countertenor)
Sandrine Schau – Bao (soprano)
Magnus Dorholt Kjeldal – father (baritone)
The Vicentino Singers (Linnéa Sundfær Casserly, Iris Oja, David Hackston, Henry Tiisma) – chorus
by David Bruce
In a classroom, in a small town in Denmark, the 8D class is back after the holidays. Something has happened to one of the boys. During the summer, he has discovered that nothing matters. The rest of the class protests. To prove that life is not meaningless, they start collecting things that mean something to them, to put them in a pile of meaning. It starts with ordinary objects – like a pair of shoes, an old doll and a pile of books. But gradually the project takes new and dangerous paths …
Nothing is about getting carried away and doing things you regret afterwards. It is a raw story that takes the world of young people and existential questions seriously, without serving up any easy answers.
Norwegian premier: The Norwegian Opera and Ballet, 2023
Co-production with The Royal Danish Opera
Composition: David Bruce, libretto: Glyn Maxwell, norwegian text: Gunnar Bergstrøm, musical direction: David Maiwald, stage direction: Martin Lyngbo
Agnes – Eline Korbi
Pierre – Simen Bredesen
Johan – Sean Bell
Karl – Magnus Ingemund Kjelstad
Ursula – Christina Jønsi