★★★★½ New opera from Liza Lim is a work that deserves to be seen much more widely.

Cologne Opera, Germany
April 20, 2016

The stage is set like a laboratory. Musicians, dressed in white coats and various items of personal protective equipment, circulate among tables and workstations on which sit strange objects – a giant bird’s head; a mask made up of half a dozen faces; and unfamiliar-looking musical instruments. A tramp appears to be conducting. Alongside the live music are the sounds of birdsong and motorbikes. Liza Lim’s fourth opera, which has just finished a highly successful premiere run in Cologne, begins as an overwhelming, disorienting and even baffling experience. Yet by its end one’s lasting impression is of the coherence that gradually emerges and is, ultimately, sustained over 90 complex, multilayered minutes.

Tree of Codes is based upon Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2010 novel of the same title. That itself is based on The Street of Crocodiles, a collection of short stories by the pre-war Polish author Bruno Schulz. Having herself written a piece called Street of Crocodiles in 1995, when Safran Foer’s book came out, Lim knew she simply had to compose a response of her own.

The key...