Vocaloid Opera “THE END” was created as a collaborative work between Keiichiro Shibuya, visual artist YKBX, architect Shohei Shigematsu, sound artist evala, and other leading creators. Unlike traditional operas, which feature opera singers and orchestras, this is an opera without human presence. The narrative unfolds through arias and recitatives sung by Hatsune Miku and Vocaloid, accompanied by computer-generated sounds and visuals. Using Hatsune Miku as a medium, the opera reinterprets the tragic structure often seen in classical operas, posing fundamental questions such as “What is death?” and “What is an end?” Additionally, Marc Jacobs, then the artistic director of Louis Vuitton, and his studio team designed and provided costumes specifically for Hatsune Miku.

INTRODUCTION

Kazunao Abe
Artistic Director, Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM)

The opera THE END is the first-ever Vocaloid opera, composed entirely of electronically controlled sound and multi-screen stereoscopic visuals—without human singers or an orchestra.

The performance space is structured to create a unique auditory and visual experience, utilizing a 10.2-channel surround sound system and seven high-brightness, high-resolution projectors arranged across four large screens. Within this electronically fortified concert hall, the virtual character Hatsune Miku embarks on a journey, asking herself, “Am I going to die?”

On stage, the only entities present are Hatsune Miku, animal characters, and Keiichiro Shibuya himself—a musician whose work spans electronic sound, experimental music, sound installations, and pop music. Constantly pushing the boundaries of contemporary artistic movements, Shibuya has arrived at THE END through a series of creative explorations. This work engages with the universal theme of “the end,” challenging our contemporary perceptions of life and death.

The visual direction, which plays a crucial role in THE END, is helmed by YKBX, a digital filmmaker renowned for his animation work worldwide. The script was conceptualized by Toshiki Okada, a director, playwright, and novelist known for reconstructing traditional theatre through new methodologies. Stage design is by Shohei Shigematsu, a New York-based architect, while the immersive surround sound program is created by sound artist evala. Vocaloid programming is handled by top creators, including PinocchioP, known for his distinctive melodies and lyrics. The production is led by the creative studio A4A, which specializes in integrating art and technology. YCAM, where THE END was developed and premiered, oversaw the entire spatial design and stage direction.

A significant highlight of this production is the collaboration with Marc Jacobs, then artistic director of Louis Vuitton, and his studio team, who designed costumes specifically for Hatsune Miku. Inspired by the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2013 collection, the design adapts to Miku’s unique body proportions and atmosphere, featuring an iconic Damier pattern. This digitized costume presentation feels contemporary and introduces an entirely new vision of Hatsune Miku, marking an unprecedented collaboration.

In this work, THE END formally incorporates key elements of traditional opera—arias, recitatives, and tragic storytelling. While 20th-century experimental opera sought to overcome these elements, THE END instead embraced their continuity, replacing human singers with Vocaloid technology. This creates a strikingly reversed and unsettling situation—an opera, a symbol of human-centric modernity, without any human performers.

By merging pre-programmed codes with the real-time experience of live performance, the work explores new conceptual and technological approaches to media. Rather than adhering strictly to tradition or the avant-garde, THE END aims to deconstruct and reconstruct opera, forging a fundamentally new creation of space and time.

Historically, opera has always depicted human death, with characters expressing an extreme surge of life energy before their demise, intrinsically binding music and sound to this phenomenon. THE END critically examines this framework, positioning opera as an anthropological device that distorts life and death. The work challenges the deeply ingrained European human-centred ideology that has conventionally linked civilization and artistic forms. In its place, THE END presents a world where the boundaries between life and death, public and private, part and whole, line and layer, human and non-human, existence and production dissolve. Within this world, as Miku senses her impending fate, she engages in dialogue with her own degraded copies and animal characters, questioning: What is an end? What is death?