Rene Orth and Hannah Moscovitch’s Critically Acclaimed Opera 10 Days in a Madhouse Receives Canadian Premiere at Luminato Festival: June 16-21

Directed by Joanna Settle
Featuring Music Director Sandra Horst
Performers Include Sopranos Mireille Asselin and Lauren Pearl, 
Mezzo-Soprano Taylor-Alexis DuPont and Baritone Jorell Williams 

“harrowing, breathless [...] opera needs works like 10 Days, which treats the medium with affection and respect while also chafing at its tropes throughout history.”
– The New York Times

“10 Days in a Madhouse is a rare piece: a contemporary opera whose subject, story, music, and execution are both intelligent and moving." – The Observer 

www.reneorth.com 

New York, NY (April 7, 2026) – Lauded as a “master composer” with a “sophisticated sound world” (Classical Voice North America), composer Rene Orth’s award-winning opera 10 Days in a Madhouse will receive its Canadian premiere at the Luminato Festival, co-presented by Tapestry Opera and the Canadian Opera Company. 

Experimental and psychologically compelling, this opera is inspired by the true story of journalist Nellie Bly, who in 1887 feigned insanity to expose the brutal realities of Blackwell’s Asylum in New York. Bly’s experience at the asylum revealed how women’s poverty, race, and grief were often misinterpreted as madness. Through her immersive, hands-on approach to reporting, she became a celebrated journalist and helped shape what is now known as investigative journalism. With a libretto by celebrated Canadian writer Hannah Moscovitch and an orchestral score by Orth, the opera follows Bly’s investigative journey under the vivid and heartbreakingly nuanced direction of Joanna Settle. 

Canadian conductor and Music Director Sandra Horst conducts a dynamic score that blends electronic and acoustic elements to create a sense of tension that mirrors the drama on stage. The cast is led by sopranos Mireille Asselin and Lauren Pearl, mezzo-soprano Taylor-Alexis DuPont, and baritone Jorell Williams, supported by a chorus of nine singers.

Orth describes 10 Days in a Madhouse as “a story that needed to be told as an opera,” discovering in Bly’s history several of her most passionate artistic interests, including “strong female characters, social justice,” and “women conversing about topics other than men.” An opera is woven from the traumas, injustices, and fierce individuality that define these women, as Orth explores their psychological space through music.

Although the world has changed since the 1887 publication of 10 Days in a Madhouse – and even since the opera’s conception, through transformative experiences including the pandemic – Orth takes the view that many of the social injustices Bly exposed remain relevant today, reflecting that “dismissive attitudes and bias towards women patients in the medical field, the mistreatment of immigrants and the poor, the lack of support for mental health, etc… are all still very much the same… even 136 years later.”

To highlight the contemporary relevance of these themes, Orth has integrated diverse musical styles throughout the score, considering what the modern equivalent of a 19th-century waltz might sound like, or how hymns and songs from that period might be reimagined in a contemporary context. This melding of styles and eras engages audiences in an unpredictable sonic universe that mirrors the unsettling psychology of Bly’s story and its characters. Distinct instrumentation is used to reflect fluctuating sanity and dueling realities, with an intimate chamber orchestra sound depicting the “normal” reality seen by most, while an electronic sound world of amplification, live vocal effects, sound design, and fixed electronic clips represents “madness,” contrasting starkly while leaving room for “gray areas” between sanity and insanity that propel the suspense and unpredictability embedded in the work. The supporting women’s chorus takes on both traditional and experimental roles, sometimes lending their voices as “instruments” in the orchestra – in Orth’s words, “weaving their sounds into soundscapes, blurring the lines between acoustic and electronic sound worlds, between sanity and madness, acting as a lasting haunt one might have after experiencing time inside an abusive asylum.”

10 Days in a Madhouse received its world premiere in 2023 at Opera Philadelphia and received the prestigious 2024 Award for Best New Opera from the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA). It was also named a 2024 finalist for Best World Premiere at the International Opera Awards. The work has earned widespread critical acclaim: The New York Times praised it for capturing “a tension that has long made opera unsettling, the way in which, say, a mad scene can be a thing of shattering beauty and breathtaking athleticism.” The Washington Post called it “an opera of unexpected immediacy,” while Bachtrack noted, “10 Days in a Madhouse does what only great art can: it enthralls and confronts its audience in equal measures.”

Program Information
Tuesday, June 16, 2026 at 7:30pm
Thursday, June 18, 2026 at 7:30pm
Saturday, June 20, 2026 at 3:30 pm
Sunday, June 21, 2026 at 1:30pm
Bluma Appel Theatre at St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts | Toronto, Canada
Link: www.luminatofestival.com/10-days-in-a-madhouse 

10 Days in a Madhouse [Canadian Premiere]

Rene Orth, Composer
Hannah Moscovitch, Librettist
Nellie Bly, writer
Joanna Settle, Director
Sandra Horst, Music Director
Mireille Asselin, soprano
Lauren Pearl,  soprano
Taylor-Alexis DuPont, mezzo-soprano
Jorell Williams, baritone

A Tapestry Opera and Opera Philadelphia Commission and Production
Co-Presented by Tapestry Opera, Luminato Festival, and Canadian Opera Company
In Association with TO Live

About Rene Orth
René Orth is a composer whose music critics have praised for its dramatic force and immediacy. Classical Voice North America describes her as a “master composer” with a “sophisticated sound world,” while The Washington Post has noted the “unexpected immediacy” of her musical voice. Together, these assessments reflect a composer whose music combines emotional directness with a distinctly contemporary dramatic sensibility, often blending acoustic forces with electronics.

Orth recently completed a three-year tenure as Composer-in-Residence at Opera Philadelphia and previously served as the inaugural Resident Composer at Opera San José. During the 2023–24 season, Opera Philadelphia presented the world premiere of 10 Days in a Madhouse, co-commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and Tapestry Opera. The work went on to win the 2024 MCANA Best New Opera Award, was a finalist for “Best World Premiere” at the 2024 International Opera Awards, and was named #1 on The Washington Post’s “Best of Classical Music in 2023.” The New York Times wrote, “opera needs works like 10 Days, which treats the medium with affection and respect while also chafing at its tropes throughout history.” With a libretto by Hannah Moscovitch, the psychological drama follows trailblazing journalist Nellie Bly through her internment at Blackwell’s Asylum, exposing notions of madness and the societal biases historically imposed on women. The premiere starred Kiera Duffy, Raehann Bryce-Davis, and Will Liverman, conducted by Daniela Candillari, with direction by Joanna Settle.

In the 2025-26 season, Orth’s work continues to expand across chamber and operatic forms. Recent premieres include a new solo cello work for Sarah Rommel at Yellow Barn; a duo for violin and bass clarinet written for Yvonne Lam and Mingzhe Wang; and an eight-minute dramatic scene commissioned as part of Opera Philadelphia’s 50th anniversary celebration. 

Recent projects span opera, song, and chamber music. Orth has composed a song cycle for Vocal Arts DC for mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack, premiered at The Kennedy Center; written A Prayer, a new song for baritone Will Liverman’s GRAMMY®-nominated album Show Me the Way on Cedille Records, conceived as a duet with mezzo-soprano J’nai Bridges and setting a poem by Sara Teasdale; and created an electronics-and-voice work for mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis’s debut album, Stand the Storm. The Chautauqua Institution developed Orth’s chamber opera Love, Loss, and the Century Upon Us (libretto by Jerre Dye) as part of the larger work A Summer Place, which premiered in summer 2024.

Earlier seasons included the premiere and international touring of Weave Me a Name, performed by soprano Emily Albrink and pianist Kathleen Kelly across the United States and in France, and recorded on Albrink’s debut album Force of Nature (Lexicon Classics). Orth received first prize in the 2023 National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) Art Song Composition Award for the work, which was also performed at the 58th NATS National Conference and the Cincinnati Song Initiative. Additional highlights include performances of You Shattered My Deafness with Marlboro Music featuring soprano Lauren Pearl, and Dear Colleagues, sung by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke at Kaufman Music Center as part of her how do i find you project.

Her music has been performed by a wide range of opera companies and orchestras, including Washington National Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Curtis Opera Theatre, Berkeley Symphony, New World Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, Summerville Orchestra, Juilliard Youth Symphony, and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. Collaborators include Pulitzer Prize–winning librettist Mark Campbell, the Dover, Aizuri, and Del Sol Quartets, Fifth House Ensemble, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Daniela Mack, Blythe Gaissert, Will Liverman, Seraph Brass, Rock School of Dance, and Pennsylvania Ballet.

Orth’s operatic works have also reached audiences through film screenings at the Philadelphia Film Center, Bryn Mawr Film Institute, Ambler Theater, County Theater, Colonial Theater, and Princeton Garden Theatre, as part of Opera Philadelphia’s Opera on Film initiative and the Opera Philadelphia Channel.

Honors and distinctions include OPERA America Commissioning and Discovery Grants, an American Composers Forum Subito Grant, a Kentucky Foundation for Women Artist Enrichment Grant, and the 2023 NATS Art Song Composition Award. Orth has been in residence at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Orchard Project Greenhouse, Avaloch Farm Institute, Tapestry Opera, the Lake Champlain Music Festival, and Luzerne Music Center.

René Orth is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, where she held the Edward B. Garrigues Fellowship. She received her M.M. in Music Composition from the University of Louisville as a Moritz von Bomhard Fellow and holds additional degrees from MediaTech Institute and Rhodes College. She lives in Valencia, Spain with her husband and three children. Learn more at www.reneorth.com.

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Photo Credit: ??Dominic M Mercier