WORLD PREMIERE | CHAMBER OPERA IN 13 MOVEMENTS

MAGDALENE

January 11, 13, 15, 17 at 7:30pm | January 12 at 4pm | January 16 at 6:30pm at HERE Mainstage | 70 minutes

This wild meditation on transformation and desire scored by the collective voices of fourteen women. Set to Marie Howe’s Magdalene poems, the opera invites an audience into the interior world of 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.

Produced by PROTOTYPE

CREATED BY Danielle Birrittella and Zoe Aja Moore

DIRECTED BY Zoe Aja Moore

MUSIC BY Leila Adu, Ruby Kato Attwood, Danielle Birrittella, Sheena Birrittella, Christina Courtin, Gabrielle Herbst, Molly Joyce, Emma O'Halloran, Tanner Porter, Kamala Sankaram, Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir, Annika Socolofsky, and Gyda Valtýsdóttir with additional music by Ellen Reid

POETRY BY Marie Howe

MUSIC DIRECTION BY Mila Henry and Marc Lowenstein

CONDUCTED BY Mila Henry

FEATURING Danielle Birrittella and Ariana Daub

MUSIC ENSEMBLE Desdemona

HARPIST Sonia Bize

SCENIC DESIGN BY Hana Kim

VIDEO DESIGN BY Keith Skretch and Emilie Sabath

LIGHTING DESIGN BY Christopher Kuhl

CINEMATOGRAPHY Emilie Sabath and Chris Lael Larson

PRODUCTION MANAGED BY Alex B. West

STAGE MANAGED BY Marcie Ann Friedman

COSTUME DESIGN BY LACAUSA

INTERSTITIAL SOUND BY Jonathan Snipes

SOUND ENGINEERING BY Nathaniel Butler

REHEARSAL COACH Ben Ginsberg

ADDITIONAL CHOREOGRAPHY BY Ariana Daub

RUN TIME 70 minutes

Magdalene is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature