L’homme et le ciel is an opera in four scenes by Toronto composer Adam Scime, with a libretto by Ian Koiter, recorded and produced by FAWN Chamber Creative. It is Scime’s first release on Redshift Records.
L’homme et le ciel takes its inspiration from an enigmatic text written in the second century, The Shepherd of Hermas, a work shaped by visions, moral uncertainty, desire, and the struggle for transformation. Across four scenes, the opera offers a secular reimagining of Hermas’s journey, using the distant world of the original as a lens through which to examine something enduringly human: the psychological pull of desire and temptation.
Here, temptation is less an external force than an interior one. Hermas moves through a landscape in which longing continually alters his perception of himself and the world around him. Desire can be beautiful, unsettling, obsessive, or fleeting; it can illuminate something hidden within us even as it threatens to distort what we see. The four scenes trace this shifting inner terrain, allowing the boundaries between memory, impulse, imagination, and reality to become increasingly uncertain.
The music inhabits this psychological space through constantly changing colour: timbre, harmony, density, and gesture are continually refracted and recombined, so that familiar musical objects return altered by their surroundings. At times, the music appears to reach toward clarity, only to dissolve or turn elsewhere. These colouristic transformations become a kind of extension of Hermas himself: an audible reflection of a mind negotiating what it wants, what it fears, and what it believes it ought to resist.
Although its source is ancient, the opera is ultimately concerned with no particular century or system of belief. Hermas becomes a figure through whom we might recognize our own negotiations with desire, the private distance between impulse and action, restraint and surrender, and the strange capacity of longing to transform the world as we perceive it.
TRACKS
1. Scene 1 9:54
Rhoda bathes and Hermas has a fleeting thought while helping her out of the water
2. Scene 2a 4:46
Hermas goes home for his daily prayer before bed
3. Vision 1 (Electronic Interlude) 2:18
Hermas transitions into sleep and dreams
4. Scene 2b 11:50
In a dream, Rhoda accuses Hermas of sinning against her. Hermas wakes up and prays
5. Scene 3 12:20
Hermas is confronted by The Messenger, echoed by visions of Rhoda, who explains his sins
6. Vision 2 (Electronic Interlude) 3:25
The Messenger shares a book of unutterable truths and Hermas is forced to understand
7. Scene 4 9:47
Hermas fails The Messenger’s test, so he must choose between the book of truths or the sword
Total time: 54:20
CREDITS
Music by Adam Scime
Libretto by Ian Koiter
Dramatic Coach and Dramaturg: Amanda Smith
Recorded and Produced by FAWN Chamber Creative
French Diction Coach: Stéphane Mayer
VOICES
Hermas: Clarence Frazer, baritone
Rhoda: Alexandra Smither, soprano
The Messenger: Xin Wang, mezzo soprano
ENSEMBLE
Flute: Sara Constant
Clarinet: Anthony Thompson
Cello: Amahl Arulanandam
Percussion: Nathan Petitpas
Piano: Wesley Shen
Violin: Leslie Ting
Recorded at Revolution Studios in Toronto
Recording Engineer and Mixing: Luke Schindler
Mastered by João Carvalho Mastering
CD Artwork by Andre Edwards-Roderique
SPECIAL THANKS
potatoCakes_digital, Immony Men, Alyssa Martin, Patrick Murray, The Music Gallery, David Dacks, Dan Murphy, Ilana Waniuk, Cheryl Duvall, Holly Meyer-Dymny, Erica Sun, Erica Olivia, Jane Honek, Adanya Dunn, Larissa Koniuk, Alexander Dobson, Phoebe Tsang, Tristan Durie, Dobrochna Zubek, Jonathan MacArthur
Generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Canadian Music Centre, and the Ontario Arts Council.
Adam Scime: L’homme et le ciel is available for pre-order from
TK590 © ℗ 2026 FAWN Chamber Creative
All rights reserved / Tous droits réservés
Release date: November 13, 2026
SYNOPSIS
Scene 1
Hermas, a slave, is attending to his beautiful and rich owner, Rhoda. She dismisses his attentions, while Hermas thinks to himself how wonderful it would be to have a wife as beautiful and praiseworthy as his master.
Scene 2
Some time later, Hermas wanders the forest alone and prays for salvation and clarity. He falls asleep and Rhoda appears to him in a vision, accusing him of impure thoughts. Distraught, Hermas cries out that he thought of nothing more of her than her beauty and grace. The heavens close, leaving Hermas alone with his grief.
Scene 3
Still asleep, Hermas delves deeper into his thoughts and encounters the Messenger, a being of ultimate beauty and fear. She confronts Hermas, advising him to follow his own truth. She leaves him with a core-shattering vision of himself, leaving him with a decision.
Scene 4
Hermas must choose between his idea of morality and his humanity. Can he have both?
ABOUT FAWN CHAMBER CREATIVE
FAWN Chamber Creative was founded in 2012 by Artistic and Executive Director Amanda Smith. FAWN is an experimental music and opera company that finds intersections between art forms. Known for their daring live performances, FAWN prioritizes cross-disciplinary collaboration to create new works and audience experiences that defy tradition and blur the lines between genres. Their work in opera focuses on exploring creation processes with a special focus on collaborative methods, such as devising, leading FAWN and their collaborating artists to new and unexpected territory.
ABOUT ADAM SCIME
Adam Scime is a composer, performer, writer, and educator, living in Toronto/Tkarón:to who works in varying collaborative environments related to performance, opera, theatre, music, and sound. Adam’s work is rooted in collaboration, and his creative process is informed and supported by the collective fabric of artistic meaning-making processes, the cultivation of empathy, and learning how to reinforce belief and communication with others. When engaged in cooperative creation, and when in close communication with other artists, it is important for Adam to learn from his collaborators so that open, safe, and supportive environments are constructed in a compassionate and unified manner: collective processes that are mindful of, and created in tandem with, the evolving needs of individual artists and the wider community. He is grateful to be regularly hired as a music director, composer, and performer to work with some of the most notable organizations, ensembles, and soloists in the classical and contemporary arts landscapes.
ABOUT IAN KOITER
Ian Koiter holds degrees in music and religious studies from Western University, where he met composer Adam Scime, with whom he later collaborated on L’homme et le ciel during his graduate studies in Early Christianity at McMaster University. Since 2004, Ian has toured and recorded with award-winning hip-hop artist Shad, and is active as a session musician and educator in Toronto. He currently serves as Director of Contemporary Music at St. Paul’s Bloor Street Anglican Church in downtown Toronto.
