Enhance Your Experience

Videos, Reading & Resources

Everest: An Immersive Experience Composer Joby Talbot, Librettist Gene Scheer

These resources are designed to enhance your enjoyment of Everest: An Immersive Experience. The opera is told as the individuals’ respective reports and flashbacks of those on the expedition. Here we show you how OP created this experience, explore the local relationship to Mt. Everest and what it is about the lure of the mountains that is endlessly enticing to humans. 

Librettist Gene Scheer IN Conversation

with Beck Weathers

Opera Parallèle was so pleased to host an exclusive conversation between celebrated librettist Gene Scheer and the subject of his opera Everest, Beck Weathers. Watch to learn more about Beck’s extraordinary tale of survival from the 1996 Mt. Everest Disaster and hear from Gene about how he crafted these incredible stories into his opera. 

EVerest Ice Breakers

Take a look behind the scenes of how Opera Parallèle created ‘Everest: An Immersive Experience’

Recording

Filming & Motion Capture

Movie Magic meets Opera

Music

Opera + Graphic Novels = A New Immersive Experience

Illustrations

Books

Into Thin Air

Into Thin Air

by Jon Krakauer

In the Shadow of the Mountain

In the Shadow of the Mountain

by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado

Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest

Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest

by Beck Weathers

The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest

The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest

by Anatoli Boukreev & G. Weston DeWalt

WHY DO we climb?

Outside sports can have positive effects on physical and mental health. Yet a study in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience (Habelt et al, 2022) found that people with behavioral addiction in mountaineering display high levels of sensation-seeking, emotion regulation, and risk-taking. But what causes climbers not to rest, so that they can climb more summits and strive for the unreachable? Below are some more recent examples of climbers.

Climbing Mount Everest has become dangerously popular. John Oliver explains why

Lhakpa Sherpa sets Mount Everest women's climbing record

Lhakpa Sherpa sets Mount Everest women's climbing record

First all-Black team Full Circle Everest summits Mount Everest, makes history

First all-Black team Full Circle Everest summits Mount Everest, makes history

14 Black Women Climb to top of Mount Kilimanjaro

14 Black Women Climb to top of Mount Kilimanjaro

The LOCALs’ RELATIONSHIP with Mt. Everest

Mount Everest is deeply connected to local cultural practices. Called Sagarmatha (Goddess of the Sky) by the Nepalese and Qomolungma (Goddess Mother of the Earth) by the Tibetans, the mountain is held to possess spiritual energy where that karma is amplified. But Everest accumulates the lees of those who attempt to conquer it, leaving the indigenous people to deal with it. The 1996 Mount Everest disaster received widespread attention and raised concerns about the commercialization of mountain climbing.

PASANG: In the Shadow of Everest chronicles Pasang Lhamu Sherpa’s tragic and inspiring journey to become the first Nepali woman to summit Everest in 1993.

Living in Everest’s shadow: the Sherpa people of Khumbu

Living in Everest’s shadow: the Sherpa people of Khumbu

How Tall Is Mount Everest? Hint: It's Changing

How Tall Is Mount Everest? Hint: It's Changing

Mt. Everest's joint measurement marks new milestone in ties with Nepal & China

Mt. Everest's joint measurement marks new milestone in ties with Nepal & China

FOR YOUNG ADULTS

Audio Book: Beyond Possible: One Soldier, Fourteen Peaks, Life in the Death Zone (Nimsdai Purja, 2022)

Chicago teen makes history as youngest American woman to reach the top of Mt. Everest

Chicago teen makes history as youngest American woman to reach the top of Mt. Everest

Pakistani, 19, becomes youngest person to summit K2

Pakistani, 19, becomes youngest person to summit K2

No Summit out of Sight: The True Story of the Youngest Person to Climb the Seven Summits (Jordan Romero, 2014)

No Summit out of Sight: The True Story of the Youngest Person to Climb the Seven Summits (Jordan Romero, 2014)