Natasha

Arato, a Japanese man who lost his hometown and family in a tsunami, meets Natasha, an immigrant who has fled her devastated homeland. Although they don’t speak the same language, they are just able to convey to each other their respective names. They are soon confronted with the grandson of Mephistopheles, who guides them through the many hells of our time.

The internationally acclaimed composer Toshio Hosokawa has been commissioned by New National Theatre Tokyo and its Artistic Director Kazushi Ono to compose a new opera. After its world premiere in Japan in August 2025, it is now time for Natasha and its universal themes to be shared with the rest of the world on OperaVision. Japanese, Ukrainian, German, as well as English, French and Chinese – Yōko Tawada’s libretto blends languages in a story where the characters cannot understand each other’s words, yet connect with each other through empathy and shared traumas. From a destroyed forest and a sea drowned in plastic to the Business Hell on top of a skyscraper, Natasha (Ilse Eerens) and Arato (Hiroka Yamashita) descend through the circles of an inferno. But unlike Dante’s Divine Comedy, these visions of Hell feel all too close to the reality we live in.