Pornopera is a concert stripped to its core: voice and body. Two singers and an electronic musician confront the audience with the physicality of sound. Early music meets the gaze of the present. What happens when music once meant for God enters the realm of arousal? When divine ecstasy pulses through bodies instead of belief? Performed on the shortest night, as daylight fades and the eye releases, the ear takes over. The audience surrounds the performers. The concert becomes an act of listening and exposure. Of desire, discipline, surrender, held in the grip of the minor second.

Timo Tembuyser, a vocalist and interdisciplinary artist working at the edge of sound and social architecture. Known for projects like Missa Mater Sola, Timo builds bridges between community, ritual, and contemporary performance, often using voice as a tool for collective experience. On this evening, he is about to confront the sacred roots of his classical training, bending them toward bodily resonance and raw expression.

Wijnand Gomes, an emerging opera baritone with a rich, emotionally charged voice and a dark, fearless presence. Wijnand taps into the Baroque’s aching vulnerability and explosive tension. His daring interpretations redefine the possibilities of voice and presence.

Natasha Pirard, an electronic musician and sound designer who works with vibration, sensation, and immersive space. Natasha sculpts a listening experience with low frequencies and surround audio techniques, blending analog synthesizers with voice and tape loops. Her creations are felt—pulsing through the floor, body, and skin.

Aïda Gabriëls, as stage director she is renowned for her transdisciplinary approach to performance art, and creating raw, sensorially rich experiences. With a background in philosophy and a deep connection to sound, she crafts immersive works that question the politics of perception and physicality.

Created and performed by: Timo Tembuyser & Wijnand Gomes
Live electronics: Natasha Pirard
Concept: Sergio Roberto Gratteri & Aïda Gabriëls
Stage Direction: Aïda Gabriëls
Dramaturgy: Lena Meyskens
Technical direction: Rune Floryn
Image: Leo Maki 
Production: DAS HAUS & oester
In co-production with: Needcompany
With the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Belgium.

In the world premiere of Cross Pollination, three artists meet for the first time, creating something unrepeatable—part performance, part experiment, part fleeting moment that will never happen the same way again.

Imagine stepping into a modern-day Parisian salon, where artists and thinkers once mingled and sparked new ideas. Cross Pollination brings that spirit back, uniting live music with visual art in a space where anything can happen. It's an experience that explores themes like fragility, decay, sleep and the passage of time, all unfolding right before your eyes.

A voice that feels like it belongs to another time—pure, weightless, with a melancholy that lingers, Scottish-Maltese soprano Carine Tinney is celebrated for her performances spanning oratorio, early music, lieder recitals and opera. With appearances at prestigious venues like the Berlin Philharmonie and collaborations with conductors such as Helmuth Rilling and Emmanuelle Haïm, Carine's angelic voice brings a profound depth to early music. 

Italian lutenist and theorbist Franco Pavan is a master of musical archeology, known for his expertise in Renaissance and Baroque repertoires. As the founder of the ensemble Laboratorio '600, Franco has dedicated his career to unearthing and revitalising hidden gems of early music.

Portuguese visual and spatial artist João Freitas is a sculptor of absence. His process of removal—peeling away layers, exposing textures—mirrors the way memory and time shape what we see and hear. For this performance, his work becomes a live conversation with sound.

Tales of Entropy is an immersive concert experience combining mesmerising visuals of real time chemical transformation processes with the live performance of classical acoustic chamber music.

The project reveals how the seemingly contrasting worlds of art, technology and (ecological) science can merge into a breathtaking performance accessible to all.

The materials presented are organic semiconductors recently developed as greener and more sustainable alternatives to conventional inorganic semiconductors used in the electronics industry.

The intent is to show the simple visual and crystalline beauty of the physical chemistry in an artistic sense, leaving room for thought and technical discussion beyond the realms of the performance, as well as highlighting the bright future vision of greener chemistry and electronics.

Tales of Entropy is a multi-format concert concept created by Guillaume Schweicher and Nicolas Klimis, as part of Ohme. Ohme is a Brussels based production & research organization working with artists and scientists.

The live music is performed by the renowned Flemish ensemble Boho Strings, directed by David Ramael.

The immersive environment is created through a collaboration with visual media artist Yannick Jacquet, who brings a new dimension to the immersive experience, and with Studio Marie Douel, who has created an ethereal structure in which the audience is comfortably installed through the performance.

This performance has been originally produced thanks to the help of the Flemish government.

‘Oltreconfine’ is a collaboration between recorder ensemble Delle Donne Consort, composer and singer Vigdis Hansa Elst and live electronics producer Maarten Buyl. These six musicians encounter each other from their own backgrounds and experiences and reach out to each other through different musical material. The basis for this performance is repertoire by Adriaan Willaert and Cypriaan de Rore, intertwined with a new composition by Vigdis Hansa Elst.

The vocal lines confront this repertoire with its own fragility and intimacy. A voice is ‘naked’, it gives away a lot about how we feel. A voice that breaks isn’t per se sonically beautiful, but it emotes and challenges. The question rises: can we find beauty in unpolished, raw sounds?

The live electronics mirror the physicality of tones. By manipulating certain aspects of sound, we can experiment with overtones, new harmonies and texture shifts. Recorder and voice are no longer two separate instruments, they become one. The live electronics generate harmonic layers unifying the two. All sound morphs into one hybrid mass.

Delle Donne Consort was founded in 2020 as a recorder ensemble, which consists of four young musicians, Serena Agosto, Lieve De Sadeleer, Kinga Ludvai and Frederike Van Lindt from Belgium, Hungary and Italy. Their name was inspired by the ‘concerto delle donne’, a group of professional female vocalists in the 16th century, who demonstrated their technical and artistic virtuoso at the court of Count Alfonso Ferrara. This ensemble was a pioneer in emancipating women as professional musicians. Delle Donne Consort operates around multiple core values: historically informed practice, connection between existing repertoire and new composition, diversity and inclusion, and collaboration with other fields.

Vigdis Hansa Elst is a young composer, violinist and vocalist who received her degree from the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp after studying with Wim Henderickx and Luc Vanhove. She benefited from a study exchange with the Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo in Porto where she studied with Dimitris Andrikopoulos en Carlos Azevedo. She has written and performed in collaboration with Muziektheater Transparant, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Museum Vleeshuis, Zonzo Compagnie, Muziekcentrum De Bijloke, ChampdAction and BOZAR, among others, and has had her works published by Euprint. She also enjoys venturing out into many other genres and art forms, for example jazz music and theatre text writing.

Maarten Buyl is a composer, sound designer, recording engineer and studio engineer. He studied at the Royal Conservatories of Brussels and Antwerp, and followed masterclasses at the Orpheus Institute and CAMP. His compositions have been performed by ChampdAction, SPECTRA Ensemble and Quatuor Danel, among others. He has worked with Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Berlin, Hermes Ensemble, LOD, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Toneelhuis and Troubleyn, with other composers such as Luc Brewaeys, Klaas Devos, Hèctor Parra, Stefan Prins, Kaija Saariaho, Serge Verstockt.

‘Oltreconfine’ is an unusual encounter by fascinating artists, leading to a collision between different worlds. And all that on a Saturday evening in April. We can’t wait to see you on the 27th!

Team:

Delle Donne Consort - recorder ensemble

Vigdis Hansa Elst - compositions and vocals

Maarten Buyl - live electronics

The new composition by Vigdis Hansa Elst was made possible thanks to the support of Sabam for Culture. This programme was produced with the help of Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles - Service des Musiques.