In ‘Lash,’ Rebecca Saunders’s First Opera, Sex Flirts With Death

Toward the end of “Lash,” a new opera by Rebecca Saunders, a vocal quartet of invites the listener to “come to bed and die.”

Saunders, 57, is a masterly composer whose recent music is becoming more passionate, expressive and lyrical than ever. An artist whose works are regularly performed throughout Europe, she has won many prizes, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at last year’s Venice Music Biennale. Her subtle music has an unmistakable momentum.

The text of the opera is by Ed Atkins, an artist and writer who often uses hyper-realistic C.G.I. video to unsettling effect. A critically acclaimed, career-spanning exhibition of his work is currently on show at Tate Britain in London, and his “Old Food,” which featured sandwiches filled with uncannily modified bodies, was shown at the 2019 Venice Art Biennale. Like his video work, Atkins’s prose is obsessed with the strangeness of sex and death.

On Friday, “Lash” will premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. It is Saunders’s first opera and Atkins’s first libretto. Though Saunders wrote a piece based on words by Atkins, “Us Dead Talk Love,” in 2021, “Lash” is the first time the artists have shaped a piece together from the beginning.

That relationship allowed Saunders to finally take on an opera. “I didn’t want to give a piece to somebody and just let go,” Saunders said. “I wanted to find the author and the directors and the house who would enable us to work on a collaborative project.”