an opera, in which a glaciologist loses her cool

Grounded in the lived experience of scientific practice, Meltdown uses music and video to explore the intertwined dynamics of grief over the climate crisis and the exploitation of people and land. 

A Glaciologist (Hai-Ting Chinn) is giving a lecture on her study of ice sheet mass loss, and how climate change impacts it. We learn that her mentor, a renowned scientist, has recently gone missing during an expedition on Greenland’s ice sheet and is presumed dead. At the same time, we hear that a male scientist has recently been accused of sexual harassment by women colleagues. What’s the connection?

Meltdown is a solo opera that draws a line from the global slowness to address climate change and the harassment and abuse of women in science. Far from being separate issues, we see prejudice against women in the field springing from the same exploitative impulse that has so affected the environment. Social evolution is key to averting climate catastrophe. 

Evocatively composed by Stefan Weisman for piano, cello and violin, and augmented by video captured on Greenland’s ice sheet during recent expeditions, Meltdown is rooted in science and lived experience. The project’s science advisor is Åsa Rennermalm, a leader of expeditions to Greenland. Through interviews with Rennermalm and research about structural sexism in science, co-librettists David Cote and Hai-Ting Chinn have devised a narrative that blends fact, fiction, and lyrical reflection. Performed by Chinn and piano trio, the 65-minute piece begins as a lecture that opens up into a psychological landscape, a symbolic ice sheet where the Glaciologist explains exactly what’s at stake. 

Through stirring music and documentary video, we hope to create an aesthetic space that accommodates scientific data, humor, outrage, and a mingled sense of grief and hope that only opera can deliver. 

Meltdown’s theory of change is to honor our grief, speak the truth, and get to work. 

World Premiere: February 8, 2025 

At National Sawdust in Brooklyn

Co-Presented by Vital Opera 

and Sparks & Wiry Cries