This libretto draws from the texts of three powerful women – Enheduanna, Sappho and Hildegard von Bingen – staging their words around the music of women composers from across the ages. Their writing is excerpted and arranged to speak as a host of voices, in the mode of a Greek chorus, extending their presence across time and space to a communal, complex and multiple womanhood. The work in this sense plays on the musical notion of transposition, shifting the register and form of the poetry to sit within a new context and aural frame. It also takes up translator Betty De Shong Meador’s sense that “Enheduanna’s poetry is an invitation to expand the definition of ‘woman across the range her writing graphically depicts.” 

Each of the texts contemplate the power that comes with speech or song, and each configure that power at different points through an image of blazing light. The libretto moves through the various manifestations of this, a journey from the sacred, through love, vulnerability and rage, to self-empowerment. At points, the voices of these three women guide us; at others, the chorus moves through their words.

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Callaway Music Auditorium
UWA Conservatorium of Music, 35 Stirling Highway, CRAWLEY WA 6009

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