Ethereal Realms - all fiction is metaphor does not announce itself loudly. There is no chorus, no narrative proclamation, no grand entrance. Instead, the audience steps into a space that already seems to be thinking. Surfaces glimmer, sound breathes in slow arcs, a lone figure hovers between musician, narrator and alien presence. This figure is Delprat’s alter ego, a posthuman double loosely inspired by Genly Ai from Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, reimagined through a feminist lens.

The work is staged as an immersive installation. The boundaries between stage and auditorium are gently dissolved, with spectators allowed to move around the central performance zone. Light and reflections are treated as compositional tools rather than decorative additions. Mirrors extend and fracture the performer’s body, so that identity appears as a series of shifting refractions rather than a stable outline. The scenography and costume design emphasise this fluidity, creating a silhouette that is at once ornamental and strangely non-human.

Delprat’s live electronics draw on baroque colour, synthetic drones and granular textures, folding them into a sound world that feels both intimate and planetary. Melodic traces float up like memories of an older repertoire, only to be reabsorbed into pulses and noise. Text surfaces in fragments, spoken, sung or filtered, asking what it means to be a woman, an artist, a machine and something else entirely in a world where technology is no longer external, but embedded in daily life. The piece never answers directly; it prefers to thicken the questions, to let them resonate in the room.

For the jury, the strength of Ethereal Realms lay in its coherence. Every element, from the placement of loudspeakers to the choreography of light, felt anchored in the central enquiry into posthuman identity. The work avoids easy science-fiction clichés. There are no robots, no metallic gestures of futurity. Instead, the future is sensed in the way the performer’s body becomes interface, vessel and avatar. The use of installation logic also stood out, encouraging audiences to inhabit the piece at their own angle rather than from a fixed frontal viewpoint.

What might have been an exercise in cool theory is instead surprisingly tender. There are moments of vulnerability when the creature on stage seems to glitch, to falter, to reveal something close to exhaustion. In these moments, the work suggests that the posthuman is not just a fantasy of enhanced power, but also a story about fragility and negotiation with systems larger than oneself. Ethereal Realms offers a model of music theatre that is both conceptually precise and emotionally porous, and that is a rare balance.

Ethereal Realms - all fiction is metaphor imagines opera as a single posthuman body inhabiting a room. Electronic composer and performer Marie Delprat, directed by Aïda Gabriëls, channels echoes of baroque music, club culture and Ursula K. Le Guin’s science fiction into an immersive installation where sound, mirrors and light sculpt a constantly shifting creature.

The audience moves freely through the space, both witness and reflection, as questions of gender, authorship and embodiment circulate in the air.

Concept, music and performance
Marie Delprat

Concept and direction
Aïda Gabriëls

Concept and dramaturgy
Katelyn King

Scenography
:mentalKLINIK

Light design
Elia Huber

Light support
Nacho Fonseca
Quentin Maes

Sound design and live diffusion
Maxime Le Saux

Costume design
Maarten van Mulken

Distortion / electric guitar
David Koch

Production
Maxine Devaud / oh la la – performing arts production

Coproduction
Dampfzentrale Bern
Gare du Nord Basel

Support
Kultur Stadt Bern
SWISSLOS / Kultur Kanton Bern
Fachausschuss Musik BS/BL
Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council
Ernst Göhner Stiftung
Fondation Nicati-de Luze
Burgergemeinde Bern
Schweizerische Interpretenstiftung SIS
UBS Culture Foundation

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Trailer