Last year, I contributed to the mini opera series Bonsai Garden produced by Opera Zuid, together with mezzo-soprano Vera Fiselier. This small opera series was created during the corona pandemic, in the middle of the first quarantine. Jan-Peter de Graaff composed these mini operas, in order to capture the different feelings we had during this weird time. The series was directed by Kenza Koutchoukali.

In this mini opera ‘Hands-free’, Amanda is trying to communicate through a text, that is being read out loud. The message consists of a series of emoticons.

We worked with the equipment we had at home at the time, since we weren’t able to meet anyone due to the corona virus. Our rehearsals with Jan-Peter and Kenza took place over Zoom and Skype and every time we finished a recording, we sent it to Jan-Peter so that he could give us his notes. The recordings were made with our own zoom-devices and laptopcamera’s and Zoey van der Heijden (editing) and Hans Erblich (sound) did a great job with the material we sent them.