Seizing agency across time: The libretto of "Sanctuary and Storm"
Librettist Roberta Barker on operatically exploring women's struggles across the cosmos
Making its world premiere at IndieFest 2023, this innovative collaboration with re:Naissance Opera, Vancouver Opera, and the H.R MacMillan Space Centre promises an unforgettable operatic experience. Get your tickets here.
The roots of this opera’s libretto, which explores women’s struggles past, present, and future, reach back into my personal past. My late mother, Diane Murray Barker, was a passionate lover of women’s history. When I was still a small child, she began to tell me stories about Aliénor (or Eleanor) of Aquitaine, one of her heroines: a brilliant, passionate, adventurous woman who seized agency and power in a time when they could be very difficult for female-identified people to achieve. I grew up fascinated by Aliénor’s successes and failures, her impact on the arts and politics of medieval Europe, and her defiance of patriarchal norms.
I was much older when I learned about Aliénor’s contemporary, Hildegard von Bingen: abbess, poet, musician, physician, mystic, and so much more. Though both so powerful and influential in a world that favoured masculine authority, Aliénor and Hildegard had radically different experiences and visions. When, in the early days of working on this opera, Tawnie Olson and I discovered that Hildegard had corresponded with both Aliénor and Henry, the question of what a conversation between them might have looked like began to fascinate us. So, too, did the question of how that conversation might have echoed the conversations that are happening within so many communities today, about how human beings with radically different lived experiences, perceptions, and commitments can best come together to fight oppression.
Sanctuary and Storm is an effort to explore some of those questions through the arts that were dear to both Hildegard and Aliénor: music, poetry, and performance. It is inspired by, and often quotes, music and words that were created or loved by these two remarkable women. It tells the story of their encounter through the perspective of the Angel of History, as imagined by the great German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin: a figure who understands the tragic wreckage and repetitions of human history, but also regards humanity with compassion and love. Through the Angel’s eyes, it strives to reflect on what the past might have to offer to the present and future as human beings continue to struggle—despite such differences and amid such profound injustice—to find avenues toward dialogue and hope.
I am deeply grateful to my friend and collaborator of more than three decades, Tawnie Olson; to Debi Wong and Arianne Abela; to all the remarkable artists and collaborators who have worked so generously to bring this story to life; and to you, the audience, who have generously joined us in this ongoing conversation about the path toward a world reborn.