ZEN

With the background of the Second World War and the postwar period, the libretto refers to the life and thoughts of the Buddhist scholar Daisetsu Suzuki, who spread ZEN around the world, and to his ally Kitaro Ni shida, a philosopher known for his concept of "the good" It also evokes the young people who lived and died with these thoughts and words. Yet I am not turning this story into a narrative opera. ZEN is based on the principle of non reliance on words. Leaving stories behind and using words only as a stepping stone, I aim to escape the world of language and enter a world of sound. This world of sound, culminating in the chanting of sutras and a single symbolic note on the shakuhachi in the final chapter, may come close to the essence of ZEN. Atsuhiko Gondai