FULL SPEECHLESS (Cat Hope) Hamburg 2023 Frauke Aulbert, Moxi Beidenegl, Marcia Lemke-Kern, Hêja Netirk
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Speechless
- Composer: Hope Cat
- Libretto: Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg
- Recorded: May 3, 2023
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Frauke Aulbert, Moxi Beidenegl, Marcia Lemke-Kern, Hêja Netirk
- Conductor: Yalda Zamani
- Orchestra: The Hamburg Bass Ensemble
- Chorus: Hamburg Choir for Ukraine
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg
- Date Published: 2023
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Speechless is a wordless, animated notation opera intended as a personal response to the experiences of refugees around the world. Premiered at the Perth Festival in 2019, it was awarded the AMC APRA AMCOS Art Music Award in 2020 for Best New Dramatic Work, and was nominated for a Helpmann Award for music direction. This is the European premiere of the chamber concert edition.
The starting point for the opera was Hope’s observation of the political response to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2014 report “The Forgotten Children: National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention”. A close examination of this document and the damning facts it contained inspired a radical idea for a libretto about the voicelessness of asylum seekers and refugees seeking protection. Rather than setting the words to music on the 315 pages, as one would expect from an opera, material was extracted from the account to create an animated, graphic score. Color schemes, drawings, tables and photos from the report were copied and manipulated to create the score, leaving the singers without words. In this way, the score provides the libretto and the music at the same time. The opera is responsive to the environment and people in each place where it is performed, but the soloists are always women or non binary people.