Language: French

Copernicus is an opera (original name: "Opéra rituel de mort") in two acts for seven singers, seven or eight players and a tape by Claude Vivier . It was composed in 1978/1979 and was premiered on May 8, 1980 by students of the University of Montreal at the Théâtre du Monument National in Montreal.

The opera has no traditional ongoing plot. It consists of a sequence of scenes around a child named after the Greek word for “purity” and the Hindu fire goddess Agni, whose soul is spiritually purified from his dreams after his death with the help of various people. In the “Zwischenreich”, Agni encounters, among many other characters, the discoverer Nicolaus Copernicus , whose name the opera bears. As a result, she ultimately loses the fear of life after death and can go into the hereafter.

“Visionaries of all ages, come together!” If Lewis Carroll met Mozart. If a witch met a blind prophet or an old monk. If Merlin the wizard, the Queen of the night, Tristan and Isolde conversed from a distance in an overwhelming ritual of death Kopernikus, an entire opera placed under the sign of fire and water, is of this kind, marvelous. "To find the soul of humanity, to put it back in front of itself, to put the individual back in front of himself and in the infinite, in the face of the total mystery that is the Universe, to contemplate it, to be able to finally be there ”, wrote Claude Vivier. From Copernicus, from which his opera borrows the name, he retains a revolution that radically shifted our gaze, from the earth to the sun and its sacred fires. Here, hardly a few stories, no dramatic conflict, no role - except evocations of mythology, tales or history - but a dream to live and the organization of a rebirth ceremony after death.

Director: David Daurier (Director)
Cast: Ensemble L’Instant Donné, Roomful of Teeth Vocal Ensemble, Peter Sellars Staging