Nineteen Mantras was initiated from the confluence of three spheres: the music of Riccardo Nova, the aesthetic vision of Giorgio Barberi Corsetti, and the corporeal realm of Shantala Shivalingappa, all three working together, seeking a balance between two worlds, two visions, two cultures: the European and the Indian.

The opera depicts a sort of "universal drama", in which the commonly understood concepts of space, time, and duration, are challenged.

The actions, rather than following each other in a succession, expand from one into the next, creating cycles which endlessly move between creation and dissolution.

The music, starting out from natural intonations of sound, journeys through the Indian cosmogony, dwelling on certain significant moments of existence.

"Nineteen Mantras will be a narrative relating to the divinities evoked in the Mantras," says Giorgio Barberi Corsetti, "told through episodes of their mythical stories. (…) enacted in music, singing, images, dance and drama."