A Copernican revolution reverses the point of view and makes the Olympia doll from an object into a subject. Inspired by E.T.A. Hoffman’s famous Der Sandman, The Sandman, the first of the tales in Jacques Offenbach’s Contes d’Hoffmann showed the poet fooled by a pair of reality-altering glasses and deluding him of the human nature of the splendid mechanical doll built by scientist Spalanzani. Today, however, Campogrande’s opera with libretto by Pietro Bodrato takes the side of an artificial creature who questions himself, his own nature and consciousness. Even the creator, the man who elevates himself to divinity by forging an artificial life is the object of reflection, reduced by his own work from a central subject to a satellite observer, confronted with the consequences of his temerity.

The object woman dreamed up by the literary and operatic Hoffmann from the myth of the artificial human and the image of perfect female subservience emancipates to join the ranks of Asimov’s sentient robots and all their sci-fi relatives. Even more it also speaks increasingly to today’s doubts and fears in the face of Artificial Intelligence evolutions. And while even certain apocalyptic scenarios are naive and unrealistic, the reflection on free will and the relationship between nature and culture, between natural and artificial makes art the key to expressing and understanding our humanity above all.