As Big As The Sky

European architect Sem Aers is working hard. He has to, given the speed at which the project’s moving, and the nature of it all. A commission to design an iconic megastructure in a remote village in China has lured him into visions of power and fame. Driving the project is Wu Cai, one of China’s new billionaires. Wu grew up humbly among the village’s cows and rice paddies, and now inspired by a boyhood dream, he looks to create a monument — both to himself, and to the rise of the world’s newest superpower. It calls for an architecture that is itself dreamlike, utopian, transformative …

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Sem draws furiously — deliriously — but the plans keep expanding beyond him. The village needs to be demolished and rebuilt to be more “traditional”; super-hotels must be incorporated for tourists, and show rooms for luxury goods …. If reality can bend one way, then why not another? Just as the distortions are reaching terrifying proportions, Sem hears a woman’s voice below. Out on the construction site, celebrity singer Qin Mulan is rehearsing an aria from a Chinese opera, which she is set to perform at the complex’s opening. Her song is beautiful. Could this be the thread he needs: a glimpse onto authentic culture, and at last the touch of something human?

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As Big As The Sky is an original opera by composer Arnoud Noordegraaf, writer Adrian Hornsby and artist Ai Weiwei. Inspired by the rise of China, it confronts the giant construction wave that swept across the country in the 21st century, and the dramatic collisions that created between traditional culture, globalizing forces, European history and a Chinese future. The music merges Western Romanticism with Chinese opera, and combines these onstage with an innovative use of film. A bold design from China’s foremost artist, Ai Weiwei, plays an integral role.