Where Does The Air Go?: Making a Women’s Opera

My project involves writing a song cycle to form the basis of an opera, Where Does The Air Go?. The opera is a long-term project, an all-women’s opera that I am curating with collaborators from the Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg and the Royal Opera House in London. The song cycle will form the foundation, the building block on which the opera will be built. I will take time to research contemporary approaches to writing song cycles and chamber operas, and think through the creative and musical challenges of writing for a variety of women’s voices, and what it means to write opera in South Africa. It will be written based on texts already existing in the vocalising pianist work You Will Find Your People Here with additional text by Bongile Lecoge- Zulu and the Women’s Opera Making Project team. The cycle will be for a variety of voices and for small ensemble and/or piano. There will be approximately 10 songs in all, each 4 to 5 minutes in length.