On the 20th of May our new production The World’s Wife will be the opening night of the O. Festival for Opera and Musical Theatre in Rotterdam. Together with transgender operasinger Lucia Lucas and director Jorinde Keesmaat we will bring a fully staged version of this chamber opera to the theatre. A journey that leads to a (re)discovery of a collective and individual female voice.

Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry collection The World’s Wife retells historical and mythological stories from a female perspective. Inspired by the poems, Tom W. Green composed a chamber opera for voice, string quartet and loop station. Various famouswomen take the stage, ranging from the sexually awakened Little Red Cap to the motherly Queen Herod.

Because Green wanted the characters to be in dialogue with each other, all the performers can be looped by a loop station. This lets the soprano be recorded in one character, and bring it back at a later moment in time when she is a different character, allowing her to sing duets and trios with the other characters. Also the quartet can expand to up to 32 string instruments colliding with each other.

In the staging by Jorinde Keesmaat, the focus of this opera becomes the position of women and the complexity of gender-relations. Guided by the warm baritone singing of transgender opera singer Lucia Lucas, five female performers explore their literary predecessors.

Composition Tom W. Green
Libretto Carol Ann Duffy
Direction Jorinde Keesmaat
Scenografy Sammy van den Heuvel
Dramaturgy Lalina Goddard
Sound Design Koen Keevel
Lighting Design Tim van ’t Hof, Rohan McDermott
Costume Design Sasja Strengholt
Make-up and hairstyling Radna Berendsen 
Visuals Bureau Merkwaardig

Performers baritone – Lucia Lucas Ragazze Quartet violin – Rosa Arnold, Jeanita Vriens-van Tongeren, viola – Annemijn Bergkotte, cello – Amber Docters van Leeuwen