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WORKING WOMEN: Songs of suffering and suffrage

September 2020 - WORLD PREMIERE
Online

"Working Women: Songs of Suffering and Suffrage" features three “Songs of Suffrage” presented alongside excerpts from the chamber opera Letters That You Will Not Get: Women's Voices from the Great War, connecting the women of World War I, the women who fought for suffrage, and the women of today through the power of song, using archival footage alongside documentary-style music videos by filmmaker Lesley Steele.

SONGS OF SUFFRAGE
On the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing and protecting women's constitutional right to vote, AOP has commissioned Emmy-nominated composer Kathryn Bostic (Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am) to create "Her Sovereign Blackness a Beautiful Light," a song expressing the injustice and disenfranchisement Black women faced during the Women’s Suffrage Movement. The new work joins songs by composer Jessica Rudman, and composer Tony Solitro with librettist Alice Eve Cohen, that will premiere under the title "Songs of Suffrage," commemorating the 2020 Women's Suffrage Centennial, and acknowledging the complex history of the fight for progress.

Rudman's “Beyond the Power of Any to Deny” uses text from Susan B. Anthony’s 1872 speech voicing the right of all citizens to vote. “Revolution Begins in the Bedroom,” by Solitro and librettist Cohen, depicts Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President, who was arrested and jailed just before the election of 1872. Both composers created their selections during their fellowship in the 2019-2021 cycle of AOP’s opera writing training program Composers & the Voice.

Music Direction by Mila Henry
Video direction, editing and 16mm cinematography by Lesley Steele
Additional cinematography by Matt Gray
Recorded and mixed by Andrya Ambro
Recorded at BRIC Arts Media

Filmed on location at:
A.R.T./NY South Oxford Space,
Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument, Central Park, NYC

For more information: aopopera.org/working-women

Working Women: Songs of Suffering and Suffrage is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Composers & the Voice is supported by a multi-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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BONUS MATERIAL

Soprano Jasmine Muhammad introduces the World Premiere song "Her Sovereign Blackness A Beautiful Light" on Sep 18, National Black Voter Day.