AB OVO

Opera / Venice Biennale, 2019
Libretto by Liron Barchat

Before there was language, there was bureaucracy.

Somewhere outside of language and time, The secretary of the universe works at a reception desk, processing eggs that may or may not become worlds. A computer decides their fate. Nobody knows how.

Then one strange egg arrives, and the computer can’t make up its mind. The system gets stuck, and somehow, the egg begins to feel like hers.

Ab Ovo is an opera performed in an invented language — an alternative creation myth about bureaucracy, chance, and the mysterious business of deciding what gets to exist.