Luc Steels (music)  — Oscar Vilarroya (libretto)

Casparo is the story of a humanoid robot called Casparo who is bought by the greedy Graziano in order to get rich and against the wishes of his wife Rosalinda. To Graziano’s disappointment, Casparo turns out to be a developmental robot that needs to be taught everything, even how to walk or speak. Moreover Casparo has become imprinted on Rosalinda and consequently does not share the goals of Graziano. Graziano looses patience, becomes angry, and wants to use the Kurzweil helmet (a technology for direct brain transfer between human and robot) to gain full control of the robot. However, due to a software failure it is the brain of the robot that gets transferred to Graziano and vice versa. In a dramatic moment, the ‘singularity’ happens:  a robot becomes as intelligent as a human – but it is not quite the way that humans might have wanted it.  

This unpretentious drama uses the esthetic of baroque music to explore fundamental issues and limitations of Artificial Intelligence and what might happen if autonomous robots start to interact with real people. The original score premiered at the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona. The music is performed by a classical orchestra with professional singers and the performance features robotic software technology (vision system, motor control programs, machine learning) contributed by Michael Spranger.