Today is a Good Day to Die: First Klingon Opera Debuts

Posted by Pelliciari on September 13, 2010

Better brush up on your Klingon if you want to see this new opera by the Klingon Terran Research Ensemble. The Guardian reports:

Tired of the Ring Cycle? How about the Qeb bI’reS? A Dutch company has written, arranged and now premiered what it is calling the first ever Klingon opera, inspired by the fictional species from the Star Trek universe. Replacing Tristan and Isolde with Kahless the Unforgettable, the production features a Klingon story with Klingon lyrics and Klingon singers – or at least “Terrans” in forehead-ridged costumes.

The production is called u, which somehow translates to “universe” or “universal”. Conceived by the Klingon Terran Research Ensemble (KTRE), based in the Hague, the opera premiered at the city’s Zeebelt Theatre on Thursday and will be staged on 25 September in Farnsberg, Germany. These performances apparently coincide with the end of the Klingon summer solstice (in this year of Kahless 846).

According to NPR, “very few examples of Klingon opera survive” and artistic director, Floris Schoenfeld, had to “recreate” – or, er, make up – the civilisation’s primary musical texts. Schoenfeld conceived an “ancient treatise” called the paq’jachchcu, or book of the perfect scream, “basically the theory manuscript of Klingon music”.

Continues at Guardian …