The work
Beauty and dissonance, together
The opera is told from two lanes. One imagines Anarcha’s life after she was called “cured”: where she went, what she heard, what season it was. The other is composed from research with communities living with Black maternal and infant death now, whose stories shape the libretto of its second part.
It will be experimental and sonically expansive, drawing on classical music, soul, jazz and electronic experimentation. It will be accessible and, at times, hard to sit with. Beauty and dissonance coexist in it because the subject requires both.
Opera is a deliberate choice. Anarcha’s life deserves monumental treatment, and the form can travel well beyond the opera house.
From the process