The boundaries between music, theatre, image, technology, research and performance are dissolving, giving way to new forms of writing that reshape how we tell the world. It is in this context that STOPERA! was born.

STOPERA! brings together artists, researchers, institutions and audiences around a common question: what stage forms for the 21st century?

STOPERA! is an independent platform for research and creation, dedicated to the new forms of contemporary musical theatre.

Our ambition: to transform the way opera and music theatre are conceived, made and passed on.

STOPERA! produces works, supports artists, develops artistic research laboratories and builds lasting cooperations between institutions, researchers, performers and audiences.

It is a space where works develop over the long term, cross disciplines and experiment with new modes of creation. An opera may begin in a conversation with a novelist, in a Czech novel from 1936 or in a Pasolini film — then take shape across several seasons, between a national centre for musical creation, an opera house and a festival.

At the heart of this approach lies a conviction: the great transformations of our time — technological, ecological, social — call for new forms of embodiment. They run through every work we carry, whatever its subject, form or origin. Music, voice, body, text, space, image and technology are not separate disciplines here, but components of a single living form of writing.

Around Sebastian Rivas gathers a network of artists, performers, writers, researchers and producers, in companionship with institutions that share this research — opera houses, centres for musical creation, festivals.

Through its creations, its LIPS laboratory, its residencies and its transmission work, STOPERA! contributes to renewing contemporary stage writing and to the emergence of a shared research space between artistic creation, innovation and society.