Join us for Mannes Opera's presentation of HERE BE SIRENS by Kate Soper, directed by Jen Pitt.

Mannes Opera’s production is the second ever presentation of this widely acclaimed work.

"...an erudite, hilarious, furiously inventive meditation on the siren myth." - The New Yorker

 
"...inspired and strangely powerful...no one interested in smudging the boundaries of contemporary opera and theater should miss it."

-The New York Times

 
Written in 2014, HERE BE SIRENS is Kate Soper's first piece for the stage and is scored for three singers and a piano (without a conductor), much like her recent and widely acclaimed opera, The Hunt.  HERE BE SIRENS presents the daily life of three sirens, who kill time on their island as they await an endless procession of doomed sailors. Peitho revels in the luxurious sensuality of their rite; Phaino stonily enacts the ritual with no inner feeling; and Polyxo longs for escape into the world of the real, delving into centuries of scholarship and research on her species in an attempt to untwist their circumstances. As the opera goes on, the sirens re-enact the abduction of Persephone, encounter (and battle) their favored sisters the Muses, and leave no rock unturned to plumb the depths of their own origins, in this work of "audacious, genre-bending music theatre" (Wall Street Journal). 

 
February 16, 4:00pm

February 17, 7:30pm

Auditorium at Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall

66 West 12th Street, NYC

 
This event is open to the public and free with registration.

Kate Soper HERE BE SIRENS

Book by Kate Soper, with additional texts by Plato, Theobaldus of Cambridge, Homer, Erasmus, Raimbaud de Vacquiras, Tibullus, Edna St. Vincent-Millay, Thomas Campion, Michael Drayton, Iamblicus, Dante, John Milton, and Sappho (trans. Anne Carson)

 
Music & Words by Kate Soper

CREATIVE TEAM

Jen Pitt - Director
Colleen Murray & Zoë Allen - Sceneography
Bailey Costa & Kent Sprague - Lights
Gelsey Bell  - Musical Advisor

Devony Smith - Performance Advisor

Sunny Min-Sook Hitt - Production Choreographer
Cris Frisco - Musical Preparation
Abi Anderson - Production Stage Manager
Lindsey Zinbarg  - Assistant Stage Manager

Patrick Anthony Surillo - Production Manager
Emma Griffin - Managing Artistic Director, Mannes Opera
Mary-Hollis Hundley - Mannes Opera Coordinator

For three sopranos and a grand piano ~ with:
India Rowland
Brooke Jones
and Devony Smith - Guest Artist

MANNES OPERA
Under the leadership of Managing Artistic Director Emma Griffin, 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.  Our program offers young artists a flexible and strong vocal technique, intensive investigation of classical repertoire,  exposure to the wealth of new forms and material in new opera, and extensive performance practice with classes and a variety of on-stage experience; we foster a well-defined sense of self with a curiosity for the new and a devotion to craft. 

 
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. 

Join Mannes Opera for our 23/24 season of contemporary American opera and explore the myths, archetypes, trends and zeitgeists that inform our time.