When I heard Danish indie darlings Efterklang had written a new opera, working with composer Karsten Fundal – with whom they previously collaborated on The Piramida Concert – thoughts of majesty, grandeur, and beauty flashed through my mind.
Fast forward two hours and I’m in the corner of a dank Cold War bunker in the depths of Copenhagen as an imposing figure swathes himself in clay and an older woman crawls across the floor, devastated, with an axe in her hand. It was time to think again.
A new genre-crossing opera, LEAVES – the colour of falling creates a, “cultic horror universe where unknown forces, rules, and scary experiments are performed to obtain eternal life.” For the audience, a captive group limited to sixty people, it’s a journey into unknown, unnerving territory.
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Walking down into the pitch black through flaps of thick plastic usually reserved for the meat section of supermarkets in the 90s, you’re plunged into a series of disorientating art installations like something from the deep recesses of a lost night between Damien Hirst and the Chapman brothers. Watermelons in cling film, boiling coffee, swaddled chairs, dripping balloons of white. No one is really sure quite where to follow or lead.
You soon fall into a golden room thick with patio furniture, yellow lighting, and thirteen musicians with deranged grins dressed in black and glitter. And so the music begins. The warm rings of xylophone and Rasmus Stolberg’s thudding bass are the only familiar elements of Efterklang you can hold dear as opening song 'Cities Of Glass' pitches the leads against each other, voices piercing around the room and resonating in the distance through the bunker’s myriad corridors.
And then chaos ensues as the players disband and you’re left in a Choose Your Own Adventure style nightmare. If this were really a dream I would have been sat with the light on for half an hour after waking.
A white haired woman in a slip careers through a padded bar, drunk and flailing, slamming a blade inches from your skin. A towering man with piercing eyes holds your chin and croons into your soul as you fight the urge to back away. Efterklang’s Casper Clausen stands bloodied and bare-chested over a pregnant woman, the face of a fox across his crotch.
When you finally reconvene with the rest of the audience and the performance regains some cohesion you feel sweet relief. Opera, a genre I would usually find alien and uneasy is now a welcome comfort. Songs like 'Eye Of Growth' even hold pop moments taking in a dash of Wild Beasts before it all falls into religious zealous.
From their Liima project to their By The Lake festival, Efterklang’s prolific creativity is admirable, but on LEAVES they’ve created something far bigger than expectations allow. It’s immersive, engaging, and at times down right terrifying, a strangely touching experience that once seen cannot be forgotten.
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LEAVES is composed by Karsten Fundal and Efterklang and directed by Christian Lollike. English lyrics by Ursula Andkjær Olsen and set design by Marie Rosendahl Chemnitz. The opera is a co-production of Copenhagen Opera Festival and theatre Sort/Hvid.
Words: Jen Long
Photo Credit: Mathias Løvgreen Bojesen
