At the opera I Have Missed You Forever you will have to accept that you only get fragments ★★★☆☆

A colorful swaying procession enters the Great Hall of the International Theater Amsterdam. Neon pink and pastel accents, mesh tops and fishnet dresses evoke the extravagant pop of the eighties. You’ll also see dog and skull masks, reminiscent of Día de Muertos, the Mexican holiday and remembrance day. this opera, I Have Missed You Foreveris also about death.

The world premiere will take place on Saturday evening as part of the Opera Forward Festival of Dutch National Opera. The production, directed by Lisenka Heijboer Castañón, is by an artists’ collective consisting of several writers and composers. Disciplines intertwine: vocalists tell, instrumentalists sing.

The procession pulls you into a funeral. Relatives of the deceased give speeches. Where the first speaker sounds resigned, the second is angry because now there is no one left to sing him to sleep. Number three tells about how the dead could argue with the sweetest people. Yet the lack is still great: the bed has lost their scent. Then it is the turn of the fourth speaker: the neglected child. Something else but good can also be said about the dead.

There is much mourning and relief to be seen, but it is not always clear from and for whom. The planks that lie on the entire ground floor are pried loose and people (or ghosts?) come out of the caves. There is earth underneath, from which utensils such as garlands, tablecloths and wine glasses are excavated.

More than an hour and a half later, those wine glasses are filled with the earth and lifted in turn. Names of women who were once violently killed are heard out loud. Commemorated deaths with often suspicious husbands.

Conductor Manoj Kamps strikes from behind a false-sounding upright piano, but later joins a singing procession. The music mainly consists of abstract, detached soundscapes: electronic sounds interspersed with scratching viola strings, the ticking of saxophone valves and copper signals.

The newly composed sounds – as intensely sung by Maciej Straburzynski (a baritone with depth and tenor lightness) – suddenly become Bisogna morire by the Italian Baroque composer Stefano Landi (1590-1639). The advancing passacaglia and the recognizable Baroque idiom provide something to hold on to.

Luciana Mancini sings the Argentine song Alfonsina y el mar, about the poet Alfonsina who walks into the sea and thereby meets death. In Mancini’s deep, golden voice, everything that provokes death comes together: sadness, acceptance, relief, resilience and joie de vivre.

As a listener, you are challenged to blur boundaries and loosen your grip. You will also have to accept that you only get fragments of the art of the makers: you only hear and see a fraction of the voices, instruments and dance body of Gil Gomes Leal. Katharine Dain’s infectiously juicy and smooth soprano, for example, is rarely heard.