The 2009 Underwater Opera Performed Beneath Manchester’s Victoria Baths

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The 2009 Underwater Opera Performed Beneath Manchester’s Victoria Baths

Susan Matheson, Juliana Snapper, Andrew Infanti, and Ron Athey / 2000s

In May 2009, costume designer Susan Matheson collaborated with performance artist and vocalist Juliana Snapper and composer Andrew Infanti on You Who Will Emerge From the Flood, presented at the Victoria Baths in Manchester, England. Described as the world’s first underwater opera, the work transformed an abandoned historic bathing complex into an immersive performance environment in which the aquatic setting was not merely theatrical scenery but central to the production’s physical and visual language. Matheson’s involvement placed film-costume design inside an experimental performance-art project shaped by submerged space, breath, water, and ritualized spectacle. The project also connected her earlier collaborations with confrontational performance artist Ron Athey and artist Nicole Blackman to an unusually extreme form of live costume and theatrical presentation. The source provides no evidence of criminality, abuse, or occult practice; its significance lies in the rare collision of Hollywood costume design, avant-garde performance, and an operational swimming-bath venue.