working women:
songs of suffering & suffrage

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

HER SOVEREIGN BLACKNESS A BEAUTIFUL LIGHT by Kathryn Bostic
BEYOND THE POWER OF ANY TO DENY by Jessica Rudman
REVOLUTION BEGINS IN THE BEDROOM by Tony Solitro & alice eve cohen

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.

LETTERS THAT YOU WILL NOT GET:
Women’s Voices from the Great War

Composed by kirsten volness
libretto by kate holland and susan werbe
Direction by kate holland

Letters That You Will Not Get: Women's Voices from the Great War gives voice to American, British, European, Asian, African and Caribbean women affected by WWI through a series of vignettes that share their responses to the war—from enthusiasm to resignation; support to opposition; the war’s beginning to its end. Combining powerful contemporary music with excerpts from women’s writings on both sides of the conflict, Letters tells the story of the Great War as experienced by the women who lived through it.  

CREATive team - SONGS of suffrage

CREATive team - LETTERS THAT you will not get

GIVE NOW TO THE CREATION OF
“WORKING WOMeN”

Working Women: Songs of Suffering and Suffrage is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. The development of Letters That You Will Not Get: Women's Voices from the Great War received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Female Composers program, supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation, as well as general funding from The Howard Gilman Foundation. Composers & the Voice is supported by a multi-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

If you or your organization is interested in being a presenter for our Working Women program, please email info@aopopera.org