You are listening to the audio introduction to Requiem for Mariza, an opera that asks aloud what the moment between life and death might look like, and what would happen if you were to witness your own requiem. Requiem for Mariza is a new composition by Meriç Artaç, with a libretto by Sarah Sluimer, premiering at the Opera Forward Festival in a production directed by Silvia Costa. My name is Jasmijn van Wijnen, I am the dramaturg for Requiem for Mariza, and in this audio introduction I will guide you through the story, the music and the ideas behind the performance.
From one moment to the next, Mariza feels herself falling. She soon realises that this is no ordinary fall: she keeps falling without ever reaching the ground. A chorus receives Mariza and begins the requiem that will accompany her towards her final end. She tries to remember what she was doing just before her fall began and calls for help, but nothing changes. Then Mariza sees the mysterious figure Ra, who is watching her. She does not know who he is or what he wants from her, but it seems as though he has come to collect her.
Mariza is flung from one memory into another: from the flowers in her grandmother’s greenhouse, to a snow-covered forest, and then to a hospital bed that confronts her with a painful memory. Ra tries to persuade Mariza to follow him into the afterlife, but she tries to convince him that it is not yet her time.
When she realises that she now exists outside time, her thoughts begin to wander. She witnesses a life that might still have unfolded if she had not died, and experiences memories she was never able to create. As the end of her requiem approaches, Mariza feels her body gradually failing her. Everything she knew begins to fade.
Ra and the chorus reassure her and guide her through the ritual of saying goodbye. Eventually, Mariza is able to see herself for who she was. Without regret, she can accept that the life she is leaving behind had always been enough. Voices of people lovingly recalling their memories of Mariza are heard, while she slowly becomes part of something greater than herself. Ra remains behind, waiting for the next person he will guide towards the end.
Every year, the classical music festival November Music commissions a new requiem, known as the Bos Requiem. This year, composer Meriç Artaç was invited to write it. She is no stranger to the Opera Forward Festival: for several years, she has guided composition students in the development of short operas.
That also played a part in the Opera Forward Festival’s decision to enter into a collaboration with November Music. In November, Requiem for Mariza received its concert world premiere at November Music. The Opera Forward Festival is now presenting the staged world premiere of the work.
Requiem for Mariza therefore began with the request to write a new composition inspired by the requiem, one that could also be presented in staged form on an opera stage. Traditionally, a requiem is a transitional ritual through which the living accompany the deceased into the afterlife.
Requiem for Mariza became an opera that asks what it would be like if the deceased could witness their own requiem, what it would mean to mourn your own death. It became a thought experiment about what happens in the moment just before you die. And despite what the title might suggest, Requiem for Mariza is an opera. An opera in which the requiem plays a major role, certainly. While Mariza and Ra are true operatic characters, the chorus in Requiem for Mariza embodies the requiem itself, the transitional ritual that accompanies Mariza from life to death.
Librettist Sarah Sluimer divided Requiem for Mariza into five sections, called cycles. Each section centres on one of the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In her composition, Meriç Artaç linked each stage of grief, each cycle, to a note that sounds as a sustained tone in the underlying electronics on which she based the scenes musically. And whereas a grieving person may usually remain in one of these phases for as long as they need, in Requiem for Mariza there is a chorus singing a requiem that continues to move forward.
The closer the chorus comes to the end of the requiem, the more Mariza realises that her own end is near. And although Mariza feels it is not yet her time, the chorus propels her development forward, as it were, ensuring that she passes through every stage and ultimately comes to accept her own end.
The title, Requiem for Mariza, might suggest that Mariza was a real person, but that is not the case. Mariza is a fictional character who gave the makers room for imagination. By dedicating the requiem to one specific character, whose experience we enter as an audience, the work avoids making general statements about dying. Rather than formulating answers, it asks questions, including what it means for a life to be fulfilled or unfulfilled. Mariza is a young woman in the middle of her life who suddenly realises that she is dying. As an audience, we do not know exactly what caused this.
The fall she suddenly finds herself in can be interpreted both literally and figuratively. It is like a vacuum in time and space, in which the idea of your life flashing before your eyes is stretched out. As an audience, we only receive fragments of what Mariza’s life was like before her fall. What we do know is that Mariza herself does not regard her life as complete. According to conventional expectations, too, her life was unfinished. At the moment of her death, her relationship has just ended, she has a difficult relationship with her mother, and she has not yet had a child, for example.
Yet she must accept the end of her life. At the end, Mariza sings: “I can see me now, I was enough. Not in transit, a whole on my own.” With this, she expresses an important message within the performance. When is a life fulfilled? Perhaps it always has been.
Besides the chorus, there is another important figure who receives Mariza in the space between life and death. In the libretto, the character is called Ra, but like Mariza, he is not referred to by name in the sung text.
Ra is a mysterious figure. He is many things at once: sometimes kind, sometimes secretive, sometimes frightening. He guides people through the final moments of their lives. That is simply his work. And he has performed this ritual countless times before.
Now it is Mariza’s turn. He takes on different roles in the memories and unfulfilled desires Mariza experiences. In a way reminiscent of family constellations, he assumes the role of her former partner, the child she might have had, and the maternal figure who finally offers her the reassurance she has longed for.
Sarah Sluimer gave him both mythological and Christian characteristics. He could be seen as a Charon, the mythological ferryman who transports souls across the River Styx into the underworld. At the same time, he is an angelic figure. He is elusive. And this elusiveness became the core of how director Silvia Costa imagined him: as a nothingness, an invisible essence. As a spirit who, by putting on a jacket and trousers, can make himself visible and walk, while actually remaining invisible. To her, Ra is a figure who is always present in our lives and accompanies us on our journey towards death. Perhaps we only experience his presence at moments when we inexplicably narrowly escape a fatal accident. Then he is like a guardian angel.
Together with her team, Silvia Costa explored the image of the angel in cultural and religious ideas through the centuries. What did they discover? The angel has by no means always been regarded as either benevolent or malevolent. This inspired her in shaping Ra. He is the bad guy who challenges Mariza and confronts her with everything she must still experience before she can let go of her life. At the same time, he is also the one who comforts her.
Musically, Meriç Artaç chose to write the role of Ra for a countertenor, specifically for sopranist Mayaan Licht. In this way, she also gave him an elusive, transformative character in the music, a sense of “what you see is not what you get”. Moreover, the fact that Mariza’s voice type, sung by mezzo-soprano Nina van Essen, lies very close to Ra’s creates an intriguing doubling. They sound alike and yet are very different.
When Meriç Artaç also discovered that Mayaan Licht could whistle extremely well, she made grateful use of that in her composition. He shifts between all kinds of musical forms. He whistles, speaks, sings wordless vocal lines and also launches into an exuberant aria with elaborate coloratura.
What the transition between life and death looks like may be one of humanity’s greatest mysteries. We have countless cultural and religious representations, and the testimonies of people who have had near-death experiences also provide important points of reference. The fact that these experiences often share certain elements, such as seeing a bright light, experiencing oneself outside the body, or feeling an overwhelming sense of peace and love, fascinates scientists enormously.
For the artistic team of Requiem for Mariza, these testimonies were also an important source of inspiration in their search for a way to make the unimaginable imaginable.
With Requiem for Mariza, director and designer Silvia Costa faced the challenge of creating images for a moment we can barely picture. She imagined the space between life and death as a nowhere, a dark space in which we are lost in time and place. A black hole governed by different laws of nature, where figures can float. In this space, a group, a chorus, appears from the darkness like visions in coloured costumes.
The chorus is a community of the dead performing a ritual. Singing the texts of the requiem is part of that ritual. The community knows the protocol, carries it out and thereby supports Mariza through the process of dying. As her requiem progresses, language begins to fail her. At one point, for example, she no longer knows what tea means.
Things lose their meaning as she loses her grip on reality. At first, this frightens her, but later she is able to surrender to it. Initially, we enter her experience, but eventually she is absorbed into the chorus. In that dark space, in that nowhere, a large cube also occupies a prominent place in the stage design. For Silvia Costa, the transitional phase between life and death is closely connected to leaving the body, the process through which our soul separates from our earthly body. The cube represents Mariza’s body, the vessel of her life.
Within that compact space, there is also a physical double of her. In the list of characters, she is referred to as Mariza in the flesh. With this physical doubling of Mariza on stage, Silvia Costa was able to give form to the process of her separating from her body.
Video images are also shown inside the cube. They were created by video artist Francesco da Braccio, who works under the name Lorem, in response to Silvia Costa’s wish to use non-human means to express what lies beyond our imagination. The images show the decay of the body, the constant merging of memories and Mariza’s invisible inner world. Lorem creates visuals to express the intermediate space between life and death.
Using specially trained AI systems, he combines and mixes collected data into new images. These images therefore do not literally exist in reality, but arise from existing references and digital interpretations. In this way, he can show what lies between things: between a head and a flower, between a face and a geometric figure, between a table and a bed. And in this way, he can give expression to a twilight zone such as the one between life and death.
In her production, Silvia Costa searched for the symbolism behind Mariza’s concrete memories and attempted to translate her personal experiences into symbols and sensations in which everyone might recognise something. She herself describes her images as exploratory rather than explanatory. In Requiem for Mariza, the mystery of dying is made tangible, but not resolved.
The music used in this podcast comes from a recording of the performance at November Music. The role of Mariza was sung there by Carina Vinke, and the chorus was Cappella Amsterdam.
In our production, Nina van Essen performs the role of Mariza, and the Chorus of Dutch National Opera can be heard. Mayaan Licht sang the role of Ra in November and will perform it here once again. As before, the New European Ensemble will play Meriç Artaç’s demanding score: at November Music under the baton of Krista Audere, and here under the musical direction of Sora Elisabeth Lee.
Requiem for Mariza can be experienced at Dutch National Opera from 13 March 2026. Should you wish to learn more about the performance, you can attend the introduction on the second balcony 45 minutes before the performance begins. The programme book specially created for this production is available in the foyer.
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