Soloists and orchestra

The Downfall of Judith Shakespeare (2026)

soprano/mezzo-soprano and orchestra
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.

The Downfall of Judith Shakespeare was originally commissioned by the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival and the version for soprano/mezzo-soprano and orchestra by the Joensuu City Orchestra.

Score

Premiere: TBA