Everything about The Lost Opera is disarmingly different in almost every respect – from its inspiration to its sound, to the way that it is presented to the public. But then, Alia Synesthesia, the Siberian-born operatic singer, multi-instrumentalist, experimental electronic musician, and multi-disciplinary mixed-media artist, not to mention the founder and leading light of Toronto’s Horror & Opera Company, is no ordinary music maker.
To start with, The Lost Opera has its roots in a collection of tapes, apparently, spoken word fragments, narratives, and short bursts of ideas that an old friend sent her, although whether this is just a plot device or an actual event remains unclear, as does so much about the world we find ourselves in. Myth or reality, the blurring of such lines is what makes everything so interesting, and after all, how much fun would life be if we had all the answers? Not much. Anyway, whatever the truth, this is the jumping-off point —a headlong leap of faith into the abyss —that began the album’s journey.
And then there is the music itself, a heady and often horrific (in the best sense) blend of burbling electronica, drifting, disembodied voices, Lovecraftian sounds, and gothic atmospheres. There is something shamanic and tribal about it, something ancient and primal, the sound of a forgotten past and of another place, an inhuman place, a blend of terror and sonic beauty, bleak darkness and shimmering light all stepping lightly to a danse macabre.
Then there is the way that The Lost Opera is presented to the public, a ‘Haunted Box’ multimedia collection combining audio drama, the opera itself, plus some physical artifacts that help to tell the strange story of “the opera believed to be forever lost, and a passionate Ph.D. student looking for truth and recording his research diary on cassette tapes.”
There is something about the project that reminds me of Mark Z. Danielewski groundbreaking novel, “House of Leaves,” perhaps not the subject directly, although it is an equally strange and beguiling tale, as the book tells many parallel and interconnected stories at once through different literary devices while also reinventing what a book should even be. The Lost Opera feels like the musical equivalent, adventurous, inventive, and threaded through various worlds, real and imagined.
It’s a strangely brilliant and brilliantly strange project, likely confusing for many, especially if you prefer your creative pursuits to be easily categorized, labelled and pigeon-holed. But if you can free your mind of artistic conventions and conformity so that you can accept that this is a music project that is at once operatic and gothic, academic and ethereal, musical and metaphysical, real and imagined, you will be able, to maybe not understand it, but certainly thoroughly enjoy it.
