Works
Chamber music
The Downfall of Judith Shakespeare (2023)
mezzo-soprano, oboe, violin, violoncello and piano
10'
Publisher: Edition Wilhelm Hansen
The Downfall of Judith Shakespeare is based on a scene from my opera A Room of One’s Own(2020–2021). Judith is the opera’s most interesting character – supergifted, passionate and brilliant, just like her brother William Shakespeare. Yet although William did, according to a number of sources, have sisters, virtually nothing is known about their lives. Like almost all other women at that time, they have disappeared; they hover as empty shadows in a history that stars only men. A genius such as Judith could, in the present day and age, become just about anything – a head of state, a ground-breaking artist or a Nobel Prize winner. But things were different in the 16th century. In my work, the ghost of Judith tells her story, the fate envisaged for that imaginary sister by Virginia Woolf in her essay.
Premiere: July 17, 2023
Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival
Kuhmo Arts Centre, Kuhmo, Finland
Virpi Räisänen, mezzo-soprano, Blanca Gleisner, oboe, Matilda Kaul, violin
Tuomas Lehto, violoncello and Heini Kärkkäinen, piano
August 12, 2024
Turku Music Festival
Sibelius Museum, Turku, Finland
Christina Herresthal, mezzo-soprano and Glow Collective