Join creative producer Beth Morrison; Christopher Koelsch, President and CEO, LA Opera; director Elkhanah Pulitzer; and composer Sarah Kirkland Snider for a discussion on the commissioning and creation of HILDEGARD, the composer’s first opera.

Set in 1147, HILDEGARD follows the brilliant, pioneering composer Hildegard von Bingen as she receives visions from God. Always at risk of being condemned by the church as a heretic, she decides to document her visions, enlisting her fellow nun Richardis von Stade to illustrate the manuscript. As their passion project bleeds into passion, the two women must confront the powers that would see them struck from history rather than making it.

Singers Nola Richardson and Mikaela Bennett, accompanied by Contemporaneous Ensemble will perform highlights from this intimate tale of two genius women finding their voices, ahead of the opera’s rolling world premiere this November in Los Angeles with LA Opera and in January at PROTOTYPE Festival in New York—marking the sixteenth collaboration between Beth Morrison Projects and LA Opera.

Commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects. Commissioned in part by the Aspen Music Festival and School and OPERA America Grants for Female Composers award funded by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation. Additional commissioning support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts. The production of Hildegard received funding from OPERA America’s Opera Fund, New York State Council on the Arts, New Music USA, the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation, William Kennedy, Betsy Greenberg, and Pamela Drexel. Developed and produced by Beth Morrison Projects.

Photo: Image by Deborah Johnson/CandyStations with design elements by Molly Irelan & Marsha Ginsberg