MAGDALENE

WORLD PREMIERE | CHAMBER OPERA IN 13 MOVEMENTS

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

 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

Program notes by Claressinka Anderson include the poem “Aubade for Magdalene” and a poet-led conversation with co-creators Danielle Birrittella and Zoe Aja Moore .