Mannes Opera is thrilled to present Dark Sisters composed by Nico Muhly with a libretto by faculty member Stephen Karam. This semi-staged concert with a full chamber orchestra is directed by Laine Rettmer and conducted by Geoffrey McDonald.
DARK SISTERS follows one woman’s dangerous attempt to escape her life as a member of the FLDS Church (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints), a sect that split from mainstream Mormonism in the early 20th Century largely because of the LDS Church’s renunciation of polygamy. The male founders of the Mormon faith (Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, chief among them) loom large in American history; Dark Sisters puts the women front and center.
The narrative draws inspiration from the flurry of media attention surrounding the two most infamous raids on FLDS compounds (the 1953 raid at Short Creek, AZ and the 2008 raid at the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, TX) as well as the stories of the over 80 wives of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Set against a red-earthed landscape filled with revelations, dark prophets and white temples stretching towards heaven, Dark Sisters charts one woman’s quest for self-discovery in a world where personal identity is forbidden.
Creative Team
Director: Laine Rettmer
Conductor: Geoff McDonald
Production Stage Manager: Christopher Denver
Assistant Stage Manager: Elyse Durand
Scenographer: Paige Seber+
Costume Coordinator: Stephanie Benjamin-Flores
+United Scenic Artists
Performances
Saturday, January 28 at 7:30pm
Sunday, January 29 at 2:00pm
Featuring: Betsy Podsiallo, Sofia Durante, Melissa Hartman, Ziwan Nie, Marcella Astore, Meredith Gray, Emily Summers, Gabriella Aguilar, Joohyun Kim, India Rowland, Sunwei Li, Isabel Silva, Luna Park, Carolyn Boulay, Christopher Lau
Under the leadership of Managing Artistic Director Emma Griffin, the Mannes Opera is a training program with a curiosity for the new and a devotion to craft for operatic artists. As part of the College of Performing Arts, the program uses the medium of opera to innovate, improvise, and create, and offers young artists extensive performance practice and opportunities.
The program engages with the rich tradition of classical repertoire as a lens with which to better understand today’s world and trains students to be professional artists with agency and control over what they do and how they do it. Mannes Opera draws on the best opera and theater makers that NYC has to offer.
Presented by the College of Performing Arts at The New School.
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