Opera by Jeffrey Ching, Concept and Libretto by Roscha A. Säidow

The King Kong myth is alive. In our heads, in numerous cinema productions. Kong is constantly revived and appears as exploited, as a protector, as a misunderstood hero, as an excluded “stranger”.

The director Roscha A. Säidow approaches the myth in a kaleidoscopic manner. She plays with current cultural contrasts and images of foreignness and asks when and why persons are turned from a subject into an object. The Chinese-British composer Jeffrey Ching lets us immerse ourselves in the world of the film myth, which is questioned in a humorous and gloomy way.

This chamber opera takes place on two temporal levels and combines puppetry with opera. The audiovisual amalgamation of the levels through the medium of film in the mixture of live cam and pre-produced material simultaneously confronts the audience with questions of aesthetic reception: What do we see and to what extent can we trust what we see, the memories of others?