Ghost Opera- June 8

Featuring the music of celebrated Canadian composer Veronika Krausas, text by Giller Prize winner André Alexis, and the wildly imaginative designs of Calgary’s internationally-renowned Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Ghost Opera will be unlike anything anybody’s seen before – a full-scale puppet opera, conceived from the ground up as a spectacle combining object theatre and contemporary composition, bringing together the supernatural and the philosophical, the comic and the fearsome, music and image, the real and the surreal.

The libretto is inspired by an ancient Greek ghost story about a philosopher who buys a house that’s strangely cheap… because all of the previous inhabitants have been driven to death or madness by the ghost of the original owner.  In this subversive adaptation, the ghost is the hero of the story, and it’s more than her house that’s being invaded – it’s her memories that are at stake. The philosopher must decide who he’s rooting for – the living or the dead – and so does the audience, who must ponder the vast and wondrous and terrifying question: what if death is not the end?