SHE WHO IS ALIVE

Three women — one orphaned by the sea, one a hunted scientist, one the keeper of the state’s secrets — rise against the iron hand of an un-souled tyranny, itself in league with a far greater power.

On a tropical island, April Jergen discovers a dead prehistoric sea creature, whose dissection kills her parents, drawing her into a chain of events that carry her to a mountain castle, where power and philosophy intertwine to take her to an unimaginable destiny.

Sonja Rhychal, the head of the secret police, slips through surveillance and becomes the courier of a message that may alter the balance of nations. Dr. Maria Stryker, scientist and spy, struggles to protect the secret of a powerful weapon while agents and impostors close in.

At the center, the Polemarch Rorman sings his insane monologues of politics, art, science, and the afterlife, while around him the three women dream, conspire, and endure rituals whose purpose remains unclear.

Fetishisms, funerals, and cosmic visitations unfold in a haunted world of something like the 1930s. Whether the lights moving in the heavens are salvation, deception, or dream, the opera never answers.