Is it possible to have a genuine opera in which everybody is dead in the opening scene? Even if the characters need a scene or two to figure out that they’re in some sort of ‘next world’? John Aylward’s one-act Oblivion, obviously, is alt-opera, a 65-minute through-composed work that seems created more for the recording studio than for the stage in its atmospheric netherworld: it drifts towards No Exit, Waiting for Godot and Dante’s Purgatorio while recalling Pelléas et Mélisande with a magic-fountain plot point allowing characters to gain back memory of the lives they lost.

Not only do a man and a woman wake up in the afterlife, slowly remembering that one might have killed the other, but they don’t know if they should believe the two opposing ruling forces – a hunter and a self-proclaimed king – who give opposing accounts of the current existential realities. ‘A central question is what might be gained from remembering’, writes Aylward in the booklet notes. ‘Will remembrance bring them knowledge and perspective, or pain and regret?’

Whether or not such dilemmas are important to the listener, the composer-authored libretto carries the spare score that accommodates relatively narrow-range, non-operatic voices and implies more than it says. Mostly devoid of operatic histrionics, the vocal writing ranges from spasmodic exclamations (something like György Kurtág’s Endgame) to straightforward, conversational word-settings in the unostentatious spirit of Jonathan Dove. The music sometimes coalesces into philosophical mediations for the male First Wanderer (Tyler Boque), while vocal lines for Second Wanderer take on a fleeting lyricism that shows Nina Guo to have a lustrous, articulate soprano in an opera that rarely asks for such fine singing.

The chamber-ensemble instrumentation with electronic augmentation is spare but deployed with implied spaciousness. Racing and skittering viola- and cello-writing is anchored by drone effects as well as electronic white (or off-white) noise. Disembodied collages of sound are heard in distant proximity from each other. Serpentine bass glissandos and well-chosen electric guitar effects invade and retreat. Where the music sits on the tonal v atonal spectrum is part of the opera’s ambiguity – and keeps the ear moving forwards despite a lack of traditional harmonic momentum.

The piece holds one’s attention but has a significant component that’s yet to come: a film version that, as of this writing, is in post-production and heading for the film festival circuit. The scenes that I’ve seen present the afterlife as a visually grainy version of real life, with claustrophobic close-ups that elucidate the opera’s power dynamics – much needed in a piece whose characters lack specific names. No doubt the film will also suggest why nobody seems to find their way out of this purgatory. Aylward is an imaginative, resourceful talent who may be ready to consolidate his previous experimentation into something that could communicate beyond contemporary music circles.