- Outi Tarkiainen
A Room of One’s Own (2021)
- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
Commissioned by Theater Hagen
- 3(3afl.2pic).2(ca).2.2(cbn)/4.2.2.1/timp.3perc/hp.pf(cel)/str
- 1 hr 5 min
- Francis Hüsers and Virginia Woolf
- English
- 26th July 2023, Olavinlinna Castle, Savonlinna, Finland
- 28th July 2023, Olavinlinna Castle, Savonlinna, Finland
Programme Note
A Room of One's Own is based on Virginia Woolf’s classic essay of the same name of 1928. The libretto is by the German opera director, dramaturg and librettist Francis Hüsers and the opera seeks to answer the question of why, from one century to another, women merely flit as shadows across the stage in the arts and history. The opera is set in 1920s England and has three main characters. Each called Mary, they are all intelligent, educated women whose seemingly light conversation leads them into ever deeper waters and who ultimately spread before the viewer’s eyes the whole gamut of human life, in all its grittiness, passions and realities.
I composed a specific musical profile for each of the characters, but the Marys are singularly interwoven, as if reflecting different aspects of the same person. Alternating as the main themes in the music are power, fate, hope and passion. The Prologue and Epilogue make references to the 17th-century Scottish ballad that originally gave Woolf, too, the idea for the cast of her essay. The ballad affords glimpses of a tragedy, infanticide, as told by Mary, former lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Scots and executed for bearing the King’s illegitimate child. Her fate is reflected from generation to generation, merely acquiring different manifestations. But hope lives on, undaunted.
Sung in English, the opera is in three Acts without an interval.
– Outi Tarkiainen
Scores
Features
- New Opera Highlights from Wise Music Classical
- Wise Music Classical invites you to explore new highlights from our opera catalogue. In these recent and upcoming premieres, new productions, and premiere recordings, our composers and their creative collaborators explore subjects ranging from the historical (Hadrian, X: The Life and Times of Malcom X, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) to the futuristic (Oryx and Crake), the fantastic (El Ultimo Sueño de Frida y Diego, Florencia en el Amazonas, Die Kinder des Sultans) to the thoroughly contemporary (Grounded, Blue, Innocence, The Shell Trial). Threaded throughout these works are perennial themes of loss, longing, magic, art-making, and community.
More Info
- October 13, 2022 is Outi Tarkiainen Day
- 9th October 2022
- On October 13, 2022, Outi Tarkiainen’s orchestral work The Ring of Fire and Love is being performed in three different places simultaneously. That doesn't happen often!
- Opera tells the untold stories. Three new operas by Opsahl, Tarkiainen & Alenius
- 2nd May 2022
- Forgotten stories. Repressed stories. Delicate stories. Three young women composers use their voice to bring untold stories to life.