Goichiro Oto: Creating Japanese Opera

2023/05/17

In the spring of 2020, when COVID-19 arrived, I updated my bucket list for the first time in 20 years.

I decided to pursue a career in music after performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22 at a regular concert of the Eine Kleine Orchestra, which I belonged to during my student days. My classmate Daisuke Katazume, who performed with me, is currently a flutist for the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. I don't remember it clearly, but we must have given a wonderful performance. At the time, I was conducting for a community opera called Tokyo Opera Theater, and I hesitated between pursuing opera—which deals with story and music—or becoming a performer. Ultimately, I chose the path of a performer and went on to Senzoku Gakuen College of Music.

Then came COVID-19, 20 years later. A two-month period began where I drove my wife to and from work and played with my son, who was about to turn two, at a nearby shrine. Freed from the busyness of performance work, I had no choice but to make a bucket list. And as I thought about it, I realized I still wanted to work with stories and music.

In June, when daycare centers reopened, I invited Azumi Inoue—the Ghibli diva I have worked with for many years in the NHK Symphony Danyu Orchestra—as a guest for Mori no Gojuusoudan (a woodwind quintet). We produced the musical recitation story "Buying Mittens," and collaborated on remote recordings of "Sanpo" and "Carrying You." I consulted with her husband and manager, Kosuke Imao (Doremi Co., Ltd., Keio University alumni). Since then, I have also produced "Yamanashi," "The Tree of Last Year," and "Run, Melos!" with narration by Kiyo Hara.

Regarding visual works, in addition to the short animation "The House of Small Cubes" (Robot Communications Inc.) shown to me by Professor Yoko Hasebe of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies—who has been my mentor since junior high school—I also added the Disney movie "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" to the Mori no Gojuusoudan program for the Agency for Cultural Affairs' school performances.

Currently, I am working on the script for a new Japanese opera for a performance on March 17, 2024. In October 2020, the restaging of Tetsuro Kimura's choral play "The White Ship with a Wooden Horse," which had always remained in my heart, led to the launch of Mori no Theoria and the Theoria Project. While I love Italian opera and musicals, I want to stage stories where our mother tongue, Japanese, and music are woven together more closely. With composer Tetsuro Kimura and singer Miwa Chuma at the center, and joined by "singing actors" such as Shinji Kamiya (actor, vocal artist, director, and Keio University alumni), we premiered the new work "Uta-Monogatari: Gon, the Little Fox" in December 2022. We aim to create music and theatrical spaces that arise from Japanese narration and intonation—things that can only be born from the Japanese language.