As part of our engagement with international cultural and institutional contexts, our founders, Genevieve Leveille and Stefania Passamonte, participated in the World Economic Forum 2026 in Davos. The forum brought together political leaders, artists, scientists, and innovators to confront the scale and complexity of climate transformation beyond simplified narratives.
For us, Davos was not approached as a platform for visibility, but as a setting where the limits of language, policy, and culture around climate become unmistakably clear.
In an interview published by Gazzetta di Modena, Stefania Passamonte reflected on her experience at Davos and on the artistic conditions required for climate work to remain coherent over time. Speaking as a composer rather than as a spokesperson, she described how the forum sharpened her conviction that climate cannot be carried through commentary alone, but requires durable cultural forms capable of return and repetition.
That conviction is now taking material form. Following COP30, Stefania Passamonte was commissioned by Norway to compose a multimedia opera addressing the melting of glaciers. The work will have its world premiere in London at Conway Hall on March 7, 2026. From this initial commission, a wider operatic structure emerged: a tetralogy dedicated to ice, ocean, desert, and Africa, which now anchors the long-term production logic of Climate Opera Haus.
In this interview, she emphasizes method as much as theme. Composition remains rooted in traditional practice, written by hand, while immersive staging extends listening into emotional and cognitive participation. Technology is treated as a governed element within the operatic structure, neither subject matter nor identity, entering the work only where it strengthens continuity and integrity.
The relevance of Davos, in this context, lies not in prestige but in contrast. Climate is discussed at scale, yet cultural forms capable of holding complexity, responsibility, and time remain rare. Climate Opera Haus exists to address that gap by building operatic works that can travel, return, and endure without losing artistic authority.
Read more: “The interview with Stefania Passamonte in Davos: music tells the story of climate change,” Gazzetta di Modena, by Cristiana Minelli, January 26, 2026.