Kazushi Ono to premiere Hosokawa’s Natasha

Kazushi Ono will conduct the world premiere of Toshio Hosokawa's new opera Natasha at New National Theatre, Tokyo, in a production directed by Christian Räth (11 to 17 August, 2025).

The opera is the third work Ono has commissioned from Japanese composers in his role as Artistic Director of NNTT, following Akira Nishimura's Asters in 2019 and Dai Fujikura's Dream of Armageddon in 2020. He previously conducted Hosokawa's Hanjo in 2004, a commission by the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence.

The libretto, by Yoko Tawada, is sung in several languages, including Japanese, German and Ukrainian. Ono explains: 'The central characters are two young people, Natasha and Arato, who are taken to a modern-day hell by Mephisto's Grandson. Natasha speaks only Ukrainian and German, and Arato speaks only Japanese, so they do not understand each other. However, they develop together, amazed and despairing at the various modern-day phenomena presented to them by Mephisto's Grandson, and in the end their hearts touch and they sing together in each other's languages – a multilingual opera.'