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DECEMBER 13, 2023 — NEW YORK — Beth Morrison Projects announces West Coast performances of MAGDALENE at The Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles. The chamber opera opened its world premiere to critical acclaim at the Prototype Festival in 2020 with The New York Times describing the performance as, “persuasive and powerful.”
“We at BMP are so excited to bring MAGDALENE back to the stage and to the West Coast for the first time.” said Sam Linden, Executive Director of Beth Morrison Projects. “We think this is an amazing opportunity to not only bring further recognition to an incredible production whose touring life was cut short by the global pandemic, but also to showcase this array of talented women composers and artists to local, national, and international opera-goers alike.”
MAGDALENE was co-created by Performer/Composer Danielle Birrittella and Director Zoe Aja Moore, featuring music by fourteen women composers including Emma O’Halloran (BMP’s first Next Gen winner), Ellen Reid (composer of p r i s m, one of BMP's two Pulitzer Prize-winning productions), and Kamala Sankaram (composer and BMP Board Member), among others. This group of all-women identifying composers set music to text by acclaimed poet Marie Howie, whose poetry collection Magdalene reimagines the life of the biblical Mary Magdalene.
The remounted production features the original cast members, with Danielle Birrittella starring as Magdalene, and Movement Artist Ariana Daub as Magdalene’s body double.
Tickets will go on sale to the general public at https://www.redcat.org/events/2024/magdalene
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MAGDALENE (West Coast Premiere)
June 4-5, 7-8 at The Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT)
Co-Creator & Performer: Danielle Birrittella
Co-Creator & Director: Zoe Aja Moore?
Poetry: Marie Howe?
Composers: Leila Adu, Ruby Kato Attwood, Danielle Birrittella, Sheena Birrittella, Christina Courtin, Gabrielle Herbst, Molly Joyce, Emma O’Halloran, Tanner Porter, Kamala Sankaram, Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir, Annika Socolofsky, And Gyda Valtýsdóttir
Additional Music: Ellen Reid?
Starring: Danielle Birrittella and Ariana Daub
More Info
Magdalene is a chamber opera: a wild meditation on transformation and desire scored by the collective voices of fourteen women. Set to Marie Howe’s Magdalene poems, the opera invites an audience into the interior world of Mary Magdalene — enlarging her to cross time and space, she appears as a woman alive now, who strives to heal the unyielding split between the sacred and the sexual. Encountering her life in flashes – wandering through a hotel, lighting birthday candles, making love in the ocean – Magdalene finds transcendence in the mundane to finally become the subject of her own story.
Commissioned and produced by PROTOTYPE Festival, a partnership between Beth Morrison Projects and HERE. Premiered at the PROTOTYPE Festival 2020. The production of Magdalene received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Fund. This project was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Photo Credit: Maria Baranova
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About Beth Morrison Projects
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Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) is one of the foremost creators and producers of new opera-theatre and music theatre, with a fierce commitment to leading the industry into the future, cultivating a new generation of talent, and telling the stories of our time.
Founded by “contemporary opera mastermind” (LA Times) Beth Morrison, who was honored as one of Musical America’s Artists of the Year/Agents of Change in 2020 and a Kennedy Center Next50 in 2022, BMP has grown into “a driving force behind America’s thriving opera scene” (Financial Times), with Opera News declaring that the company, “more than any other… has helped propel the art form into the twenty-first century.”
Operating across the US and internationally, with offices in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, BMP’s unique model offers living composers the support, guidance, and freedom to experiment, allowing them to create singularly innovative and impactful projects. Since forming in 2006, the company has commissioned, developed, produced and toured over 60 works in 14 countries around the world, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning chamber operas Angel’s Bone and p r i s m.
In 2013, BMP co-founded the PROTOTYPE Festival with HERE Arts Center, which has been called “utterly essential” (The New York Times), “indispensable” (The New Yorker), and “one of the world’s top festivals of contemporary opera and theater” (Associated Press). https://www.bethmorrisonprojects.org
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The Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) is a multidisciplinary center for innovative visual and performing art founded by the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles. Through performances, exhibitions, screenings and literary events, REDCAT introduces diverse audiences, students, and artists to the most influential developments in the arts from around the world, and gives artists in this region the creative support they need to achieve national and international stature. REDCAT continues the tradition of CalArts by encouraging experimentation, discovery and lively civic discourse.
Throughout its history, REDCAT has worked to be an equitable forum for experimentation and innovation. As part of CalArts’ mission and values, and its IDEA (Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity and Access) Cooperative, REDCAT along with the Institute, have redoubled their efforts to confront, address, and eradicate the structural, systemic, and societal injustices that are threaded through our communities. REDCAT is committed to ensuring and supporting IDEA in all its policies and practices.
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