Yuri Umemoto /​ Oslo Sinfonietta /​ Ivar Furre Aam
Sound Switchers present crypt_

11. september 2026

Past showings

19:00, Store scene

Note! This event is alcohol-free.

Tonight, Lydbryter takes over and invites young people aged 16 to 19 to a free performance. Lydbryter is an outreach programme in which young people aged 16 to 19 develop content and events for other young people.

Samuel, Diana, Olivia and Margot have chosen to present crypt_ because they recognise themselves in it — in the search for who you are, in a world split between tradition and digital doubles, and in the meeting between operatic voices and hyperpop. On top of that, the whole universe is drawn from anime aesthetics. This isn't an opera for your grandparents. This is an invitation from your peers.

Doors open at 18.00 for snacks, mocktails, mingling and anime drawing in the foyer. Admission is free, but remember to book a ticket. Lydbryter will give a short introduction before the performance starts at 19.00.


An anime opera about money, fame, art and life

A blind musician plays for an audience he cannot see. Night after night he performs his best, convinced he is entertaining a great lord and his court.

The Japanese ghost story of Hoichi the Earless has haunted Japanese culture for centuries. For composer Yuri Umemoto, it became something more personal. He transposes Hoichi’s tale into the present, where a young composer, Umemoto’s own alter ego, is lured into a crypt beneath a European church. There he encounters three ghostly nobles and their digital doubles, who put his deepest longings to the test: his ambition, his faith, his music, his sense of who he is. The question at the heart of the opera is deceptively simple: what do you want, and at what cost?


Want to know more?

  • Composer Yuri Umemoto is 24 years old. Umemoto grew up in Akihabara in Tokyo, surrounded by the visual and sonic worlds of Japanese popular culture, while also listening to Western classical music and singing in Catholic church choirs. These worlds never fully separated. In crypt_, they collide.
  • crypt_ is inspired by the Japanese ghost story of Hoichi the Earless, a blind biwa player whose music draws the dead to him. Monks try to protect Hoichi with sacred texts written on his body, but forget his ears, which the ghosts tear away.
  • Lydbryter is a collaboration with Ultima, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir, made possible with support from Sparebankstiftelsen DNB, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and the Fure Foundation.

In collaboration with Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival and Oslo Sinfonietta .

  • Duration 90 minutter