Magdalene is a chamber opera in thirteen movements—a wild meditation on transformation and desire scored by the collective voice of fourteen women composers: Leila Adu, Ruby Kato Attwood, Danielle Birritetella, Sheena Birrittella, Christina Courtin, Gabrielle Herbst, Molly Joyce, Emma O’Halloran, Tanner Porter, Ellen Reid, Kamala Sankaram, Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir, Annika Socolofsky, and Gyða Valtýsdóttir. Set to Marie Howe’s Magdalene poems, the opera invites an audience into the interior world of the biblical figure Mary Magdalene—enlarging her to cross time and space, she appears as a woman alive now, who strives to heal the unyielding split between the sacred and the sexual. Encountering her life in flashes—wandering through a hotel, lighting birthday candles, making love in the ocean—Magdalene finds transcendence in the mundane to finally become the subject of her own story.
Back to All Events