Deep Siesta is a chamber opera in three acts with prologue by the Tehran-born composer Amen Feizabadi, issued on two CDs as his portrait release in the German Music Council's Edition Zeitgenössische Musik. Its subject is artificial intelligence seen from the inside: two artificial beings, Ök and Mani, born of digital chaos, discover the human world with curiosity and finally turn against it.

Feizabadi was born in Tehran in 1983, studied integrative composition at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, and lives and works in Berlin, where he also makes films. The German Music Council selected him for a portrait CD in 2023. The singers are the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, here mezzo-soprano Helena Sorokina, countertenor Daniel Gloger, tenor Martin Nagy and bass Andreas Fischer. They are joined by the nine players of the Zafraan Ensemble (flute, clarinet, harp, percussion, piano and keyboard, string quartet and double bass) under Yalda Zamani, with dramaturgy by Konstantin Parnian. The recording is a coproduction of Deutschlandfunk Kultur and the German Music Council.

The libretto is by Dilek Mayatürk. Ök and Mani encounter beauty and emotion, then the contradictions and abysses of the human condition, and resolve to destroy humanity and, in the end, themselves. The text grows from scattered fragments of words towards more complex linguistic connections and reaches its emotional climax when the language shifts from German to Persian. The score is built on acoustic writing for voices and ensemble, but AI-generated voices, images and electronic sounds on tape progressively blur the boundary between the real and the virtual. Elements of traditional Persian music are woven into the texture.

The German title of the release calls the piece a Kammerhöroper, a chamber opera for the ear, and on disc the drama is carried by voices, instruments and electronics alone. Its 85 minutes run from a prologue, Zero Momentum I, through sections with names such as Genesis, Begegnung & Kontakt, Offenbarung, Macht and Zerstörung, to a third act of Stille, Liebe, Leere and Konflikt und Akzeptanz. It closes with Zero Momentum II and a final Reset, so the story returns to the zero point where it began. The usual discourse on artificial intelligence is reversed: human existence is observed through the eyes of the machines, and it looks alien to them.

Double CD, Wergo WER 6450 2, released in 2026 in the Edition Zeitgenössische Musik of the German Music Council (Deutscher Musikrat).