Search The Line of Best Fit
Search The Line of Best Fit
Julia Holter burakcingi bestfit 09

Julia Holter's Tragedy LP is being turned into an opera

27 April 2017, 17:27 | Written by Laurence Day

Julia Holter's album Tragedy is getting a huge rework - it's being turned into an opera for the stage with new arrangements

Holter's 2011 LP was inspired largely by ancient Greek play Hippolytus by Euripides.

Yelena Zhelezov and Zoe Aja Moore - who have worked with Holter in the past, notably on the "Goddess Eyes II" video from Ekstasis - are on board for the opera, which is set to premiere on 22 June at Brooklyn's National Sawdust. Holter, Zhelezov, and Moore will be performing the new arrangements of the album's songs with The Wild Up Ensemble.

A press release explains more about the show: "Tragedy will encounter and play with themes that resonate with both the classic text and our contemporary moment: the complexities of shame, loss of empathy, and our inability to see ourselves and one another clearly. The mise-en-scene of the opera will draw upon the visual elements that originally inspired the music - shadows, reflections, echoes, fragments, statues - and will layer vocal performers, multiple channels of video (both live and sourced content), and performing objects to create a haunting emotional landscape."

Share article
Email

Get the Best Fit take on the week in music direct to your inbox every Friday

Read next