Opera with immersive video scenography and electronic music accompaniment (42:50)

Act 1

1.1 He isn’t well (i)
1.2 He isn’t well (ii) – Interlude
1.3 He isn’t well (iii)
1.4 Advise your son

Act 2

2.1 Grief
2.2 Empty Space
2.3 What if?
2.4 The silent lands / She is dead

Act 3

3.1 Careful now (i)
3.2 Orpheus Plays
3.3 Careful now (ii)
3.4 The waters of Lethe

Act 4

4.1 Before the court
4.2 A road leading home
4.3 The wind 4.4
She’s behind you

The sound of grief is a 40-min immersive media opera written by composer-in-residence Freida Abtan for the Peninsula Women’s Chorus (PWC). The production premiered at the chorus’ spring season concerts April 17-19, 2026 at Meets the Eye Studio outside of San Francisco and was broadcasted via livestream. The score is written for treble divissi and features largescale video accompaniment as well as electronic sound design.

The sound of grief tells the story of Orpheus from Greek mythology: a musician of outstanding prowess who travels to the underworld to rescue his bride, Euridice.  The narrative celebrates the power of art as a mechanism for reshaping reality and warns against the hubris of trying to escape one’s fate. In the first movement, Orpheus grieves and disrupts the natural order of all things through the emotion in his music. The chorus pleads with his mother, the muse Calliope, to intercede. The three fates command her to destroy him if she cannot stop his laments.  Moved by her son’s sadness, in the second movement Calliope suggests a possible solution: to plead with the god of the underworld, Hades, and ask him to return Euridice to the world of the living.  The chorus warns Orpheus to accept his wife’s death or to kill himself to join her. The third movement describes the perils of Orpheus’ journey through the underworld where he is surrounded by ‘shades’ who ignore him until he plays his lyre. Finally, in the last movement, Hades’ demands that Orpheus leaves the underworld and promises that if he can do so without gazing behind him Euridice will follow him. The story ends with his fateful look backwards, when Orpheus, now immortal, faces eternity without his wife.

The visual materials for the production were created through a significant workshop process with the chorus, video of which will became the source material for the production. Abtan used guided improvisation to direct the chorus through scenes from the narrative with specific choreography, shot at a chroma-key video production facility. The production’s narrative and score was formed around these improvisations and reflects the deep spirit of collaboration that took place within the workshops. Abtan also recorded musical experiments to shape the score-in-development and from which to create the electronic music included in the production. The resulting audiovisual media is tightly tied to the score which must be performed with a click track to guide the conductor towards synchronization. The production incorporates the physical staging and performance of the chorus as well as the created audio and video within its narrative conceit. In future, production video will need to be adapted to the physical realities of differing projection environments within performance venues to account for the chorus’ staging as well as for the viewpoints of the audience. 

The Sound of Grief was supported in part by funding from the Carnegie Mellon University College of Fine Art’s Fund for Research and Creativity.