Vanishing Point

Resulting from a collaboration between Iranian-Canadian directors and composers Nika Khanjani and Parisa Sabet, this opera for soprano and mezzo-soprano portrays a confrontation between a recently retired mother and her adult daughter in a Montreal apartment that is both grandiose and dilapidated.

In presence of the director Nika Khanjani on March 24, 2024 at the McCord Stewart Museum in Montréal

Word of direction

A proud, recently retired woman and her adult daughter square-off in a grand but faded Montréal apartment. It’s a familiar and tiresome routine for the two of them, but today their complex give-and-take will open a door to an entirely unexpected, terrifying, and potentially wondrous future neither are fully ready to enter. Vanishing Point is a 30-minute opera for soprano and mezzo-soprano that I created in collaboration with composer Parisa Sabet. We have taken elements from our shared history as Iranian immigrants to craft a challenging piece of complex and nuanced emotional shifts, a whiplash of tenderness and bitterness, and a sober question of whether we can reframe a crisis into an opportunity to show up fully present for someone we love even as we watch them slip away. Densely crafted around themes of loss, migration, and unresolved trauma, it asks audiences to bring their attention, patience, and empathy to an emotional canvas that is perhaps uncommon in traditional opera.

We have designed this piece as a vehicle exclusively for BIPOC performers. In this filmed version, Fredericka Petit-Homme and Ruth Acheampong embody two women who, like many Iranian immigrants to North America, resist aligning themselves with any simple and reductive category — especially when facing the universal challenges and heartbreak of the loss of identity through dementia.

– Nika Khanjani