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Everest: Opera in the Planetarium

Everest: Opera in the Planetarium is an immersive, visually stunning reimagining of Joby Talbot’s acclaimed opera, with a libretto by Gene Scheer. Based on the true story of the ill-fated 1996 Mount Everest expedition, this groundbreaking production combines intricate graphic novel-style imagery with a soaring, impassioned score, the opera is projected across a planetarium’s vast dome, creating an unparalleled sensory experience.

The story follows climbers Rob Hall, Doug Hansen, and Beck Weathers as they attempt to reach the summit of the world’s highest peak. As the climbers struggle to survive in the brutal conditions, the production blends their present challenges on Everest with poignant flashbacks to their pasts and moments with loved ones. Using facial tracking technology, the singers’ performances are transformed into animated visuals, bringing the emotional depth of the opera to life in a visually dynamic way.

With a rich, recorded performance by a renowned cast conducted by the internationally acclaimed Nicole Paiement, Everest: Opera in the Planetarium captures the raw power of nature, the perseverance of the human spirit, and the haunting, tragic reality of the climbers’ final hours. As a powerful storm rages and the climbers’ fates unfold, the audience is immersed in the climbers’ harrowing journey, experiencing the immense beauty and danger of Everest in an entirely new way.

  • Joby Talbot
    Composer
  • Gene Scheer
    Librettist
  • Brian Staufenbiel
    Director
  • Nicole Paiement
    Conductor
  • Opera Parallèle
    Producer
  • Sasha Cooke
    Key Cast
    "Jan Arnold"
  • Nathan Granner
    Key Cast
    "Rob Hall"
  • Kevin Burdette
    Key Cast
    "Beck Weathers"
  • Hadleigh Adams
    Key Cast
    "Doug Hansen"
  • David Murakami
    Director of Photography & Animator
  • Mark Simmons
    Illustrator
  • Miles Lassi
    Sound Designer
  • California Academy of Sciences
    Key Collaborators
  • Project Type:
    360 Video
  • Genres:
    Adventure, Opera, Animated, Graphic Novel, Music
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 8 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    November 8, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    145,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States, United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Student Project:
    No
  • California Academy of Sciences - Morrison Planetarium
    San Francisco
    United States
    November 8, 2024
    World Premiere
Director Biography - Brian Staufenbiel

Brian Staufenbiel is the creative director for Opera Parallèle where he has directed and created the conceptual designs of the company’s productions since it was founded in 2010. Specializing in multimedia, immersive, and interdisciplinary productions, he actively works across a wide range of artistic disciplines collaborating in film, and with media designers, choreographers and dancers, circus artists, and designer fabricators. His progressive approach to stagecraft has garnered critical acclaim for many of the company’s productions, including Wozzeck, Orphée, Champion and Dead Man Walking.

Staufenbiel recently directed films for the online festival season of the Sun Valley Music Festival, a film of Dove/Angelis’ Flight for Seattle Opera, an award-winning graphic novel film of Talbot/Scheer’s Everest with Opera Parallèle, and a feature-length film of Gordon Getty’s opera Goodbye Mr. Chips for Festival Napa Valley. His most recent film premiere is a new documentary about the life of legendary mezzo-soprano Frederica Von Stade with Paper Wings Films.

Recent stage productions includes new productions of Moravec and Campbell’s The Shining and a fully immersive experience of Talbot and Scheer’s Everest, for Opera Parallèle, and Golijov’s Ainadamar for L’opera De Montréal. Staufenbiel also co-directed, with choreographer Yayoi Kambara, IKKAI, a dance installation about Japanese incarceration camps in the United States during World War II.

Staufenbiel recently created a new production of Elektra for Minnesota Opera. His 2016 production of Das Rheingold for Minnesota Opera was reprised at Arizona Opera and L’Opéra de Montréal and will open the 60th season at Seattle Opera. It was named a Star Tribune Classical Pick of the Decade. Other recent projects include the premiere of Miguel Zenon’s Golden City Suite with SF JAZZ, and a new production of Gordon Getty’s Usher House and Canterville Ghost for the Center of Contemporary Opera in NY and LA Opera.

Staufenbiel enjoys an ongoing relationship with composer Philip Glass, having directed many of his operas including In the Penal Colony for Glass’ own festival. The production is currently streaming on a new platform, Philip Glass Days and Night’s Festival Presents, and was named a New York Times Top Ten pick. He recently finished the Cocteau Trilogy with Opera Parallèle’s acclaimed production of La belle et la Bête.

Staufenbiel recently left his position after seventeen years as the director of the opera program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he mounted a wide spectrum of award-winning productions ranging from traditional operas to commissioned works for the program. Staufenbiel holds degrees in Philosophy and Music including a Doctor of Musical Arts from the Eastman School of Music and currently resides in San Francisco.

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Director Statement

If you’ll forgive a touch of hyperbole, creating an opera production is a bit like climbing a mountain. Especially when it comes to planning and execution, one sees parallels when moving from base camp to the summit — with all the challenges and sometimes even trauma along the way. As the character based on the real-life Rob Hall says in the opera, “Oxygen, can someone bring me some oxygen?”

When Opera Parallèle first decided to explore merging opera with the graphic novel aesthetic in our 2013 production of Dante De Silva’s Gesualdo, Prince of Madness, the furthest thing from my mind was that we would end up creating a full-fledged planetarium production of an entirely different opera rendered as an animated graphic novel. Yet here we are celebrating the company’s 15th anniversary by presenting a world premiere of Everest: Opera in the Planetarium by composer Joby Talbot and librettist Gene Scheer. For an organization that has always strived to create opera with cutting-edge technology in unconventional spaces and through unique collaborations, it’s especially sweet that we’ve gotten to partner with our neighbor, the world-renowned California Academy of Science.

Sure, we needed to stop along the way and catch our breath as we created three firsts in opera history, one might even call it Operatic Acclimating. The first step of this Everest journey (a kind of trilogy) began during the COVID pandemic when OP created a first-ever full-length, graphic-novel opera film of Everest, which played online as people were cloistered in their homes. We recognized that the quality of the illustrations and motion-capture that manifest the profound performances of our amazing cast needed to be explored further. As OP was already experimenting with immersive productions and always loved integrating the audience into the performance space, we took our second step, creating another first in opera with a fully immersive Everest production at Z Space — complete with 360-degree projections on walls and rocks and onto the audience itself covered with white ponchos. After the success of this immersive version, we decided to flip things on their head and look above to see what would be possible in a dome environment. David Murakami, lead animator and director of photography, crafted an extraordinary journey, allowing this third and final iteration, Everest: Opera in the Planetarium, to reach an OP Summit, placing you into a fully integrated 360-degree dome — inside the same journey as the characters in the story.

A special thanks to all our new friends at the Academy and for their support creating this production. And to you, fellow OP climbers, thank you for being with us on this final ascent. We hope you enjoy this and many future adventures to come with OP!

Brian Staufenbiel
Creative Director