Endorphin Branding™ on an Operatic Scale

This opera stinks. No…really!

Through their joint business venture, Aeosphere LLC, entrepreneur Stewart Matthew and veteran perfumer Christophe Laudamiel have created a 40-minute “operatic” work that features 23 carefully-composed fragrances as its cast of characters. Green Aria: A ScentOpera, an olfactory odyssey in which scent takes the place of voice, will premiere in a pitch black Lewis Theater at the Guggenheim on May 31.

For opera aficionados, the “opera” label may seem inappropriate, but–in fragrance parlance, where the story of a scent is told through a “top note, middle note and base note”–the ScentOpera strikes just the right chord. “A lot of people get pilloried for attempting things with scent, mostly because there’s been such awful technology,” says Matthew, who believes Aeosphere has perfected the technology which will set them apart from their less-effective antecedents. Each audience chair will be outfitted with scent “microphones” linked to the central organ that will discharge a litany of time-controlled scents. This delivery system was specifically designed over the past two years for this event in collaboration with Flakt Woods, a global leader in integrated ventilation.

Matthew and Laudamiel have also done their homework into the workings of the human olfactory and limbic system, by the way, and are keenly aware of the phenomenon of “scent recall”–or endorphin branding™, in Whiffology terminology. Green Aria’s all-natural scents are “scents that have never been smelled before” which will offer audience members no point of reference to associate the 23 new fragrances with any past experience.