Sat 2/1 @ 2PM
Sun 2/2 @2PM
Composer Nico Muhly and his librettist Stephen Karam found the material for their open Dark Sisters, which was first performed in 2016, in stories about a fundamentalist breakaway sect of the Mormon Church, which leaned heavily on male authority and polygamy which they investigated in depth.
“What emerged from months of research was a complicated tapestry of relationships about — but never focused on — women,” writes Muhly. “The willpower of the patriarch permeates everything, despite the population demographics (polygamy, practically, requires that there be many more women than men). The women’s stories mirror the narrative of the American expansion westward and all of the political and emotional worries surrounding an adolescent nation.”
Dark Sisters revolves around a women’s attempt to escape the sect, and gives each woman portrayed a distinctive vocal profile.
The Cleveland Institute of Music’s Opera theater program will perform the opera twice at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, with a cast featuring six women’s voices and a baritone, backed by a chamber ensemble. Go here for tickets.
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