LIFE premiered to seven sold-out shows in Tokyo and Osaka. The work, an attempt to examine the music and events of the 20th century with a macrocosmic/microcosmic view of the entire flow of art and civilization, was an unconventional opera without a libretto. The production featured contributions and performances by over one hundred performers such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Salman Rushdie, Pina Bausch, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It spanned nearly all forms of media, including a live performance with a full orchestra, soloists, choir, folk musicians, human voice & other samples, and a live global internet relay. It was also Sakamoto’s first collaboration with the visual artist and director Shiro Takatani as the opera’s visual director.
Modeled on various factors in the opera LIFE (1999), Sakamoto and Takatani went on to create their installation LIFE–fluid, invisible, inaudible... conceived by the two artists in 2007.