The Globe’s Geoff Edgers offers this explanation:

The Media Lab’s Tod Machover’s opera "which features a libretto by poet Robert Pinsky and a 15-piece orchestra conducted by Opera Boston’s Gil Rose, centers on a character named Simon Powers, a businessman-inventor. Nearing the end of his life, Powers decides to "download’’ himself into his surroundings. That turns his walls, books, and chandelier into a network called "The System,’’ a place other characters in the production are forced to explore.

But there’s a decent argument that the true onstage stars of "Death’’ are made of wires, metal, and LED lights. These are the robots, including a dozen "Operabots,‘’ as Machover calls them, with plastic, pizza box-shaped heads. There are also three towering, lit-up, moving wall sections and a Teflon-strung chandelier that can be played as an instrument. The robots can operate autonomously, and they also respond to an operator’s joystick and performers’ voices, which cause the robots to tilt their heads and light up. The Operabots also sing, in the prologue and epilogue.

More here from MIT: https://arts.mit.edu/fast/opera/