The 2025 OzAsia Festival is right on our doorstep, this year running between October 17 October and 9 November.
This year, the incredible Opera For The Dead will be making its Australian premiere at the Odeon Theatre. A contemporary Chinese cyber-opera that reimagines the connection between life and death, inspired by Chinese mourning rituals, Opera For The Dead is an immersive, multi-art form performance combining live musicians and singers with electronic processing, mobile stages, ambisonic sound, and 3D animation.
Mindy Meng Wang is part of the creative team, composer and performer for Opera For The Dead. She is a versatile Chinese / Australian Composer and world leading contemporary Guzheng Performing Artist. Mindy’s work explores the fertile space between traditional and contemporary practices; her cross-cultural life and professional experience create her unique style, which is influenced by Chinese and Western music. She is a pioneer in bringing the Guzheng (an ancient Chinese horizontal harp) into many Western genres such as experimental, jazz, western classical, electronic and improvisation.
Mindy spoke to Glam Adelaide about Opera For The Dead, how it was created and where her love of music grew from.
“Growing up, my family didn’t really have a musical background. My parents worked looking into history, so when I was young, I was very interested in culture, especially Buddhism culture. My father is a professor and expert in this. Because we lived in the university, our neighbour became my music teacher. Everyday I would hear her playing beautiful music, so immediately I felt like I wanted to do this and to be able to play music as well.”
Opera For The Dead is an incredible work that looks deep into Asian culture and customs around funerals.
“For this project I worked with my friend Monica Lim. We have known each other for a long time and we cherish our friendship. About two or three years ago, we started to work together. Monica grew up in China and I grew up in Malaysia. We both have an interest in traditions and rituals and we decided it would be great for us to create a work that focuses on this. We started to look into and research Chinese funerals and the customs around them. We started to develop a work around this and we knew we wanted it to be immersive – we wanted people to enter the performance space and it just feels like they have gone into a completely different world.”
Audiences are invited to move freely through the shifting performance space as it transforms from stage to cinema to dance floor, journeying between the real and imaginary, past and present.
“We wanted to design the show so everyone would have a slightly different experience depending on where they are sitting or standing. I think we have achieved that with how the staging moves and how the audience moves in between the performance areas.”
Opera For The Dead is an epic work for those who find beauty in the darkness and humour in the macabre.
Opera For The Dead – OzAsia Festival 2025
The Odeon Theatre, Norwood
Wednesday 5 November at 7.30pm (plus a Q&A session)
Thursday 6 November at 6.00pm and 8.00pm
Runtime is 50 minutes, with no interval
https://ozasia.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/whats-on/opera-for-the-dead
Photo credit: Dewie Bukit
