Composer to Premiere Harriet Tubman Opera at Yellow Barn

PUTNEY, VT — Yellow Barn’s 54th Summer Festival continues with performances highlight the work of Composer in Residence Hilda Paredes.

The cornerstone of Paredes’ residency is the American Premiere of her award-winning chamber opera “Harriet, Scenes from the Life of Harriet Tubman.”

The libretto for Harriet is based on poetry by Mayra Santos-Febres and dialogues by Lex Bohlmeijer. Paredes said, “After being invited by Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México to write a new opera, I asked my friend Claron McFadden if she would like to feature in this project and she immediately introduced me to Harriet Tubman. A six year journey began then, discovering the extraordinary life and personality of Harriet Tubman,” said Paredes. “I always say and still think that if she had lived in the twentieth century she would have been awarded the Nobel peace prize.” The world renowned soprano Claron McFadden will reprise the role of Harriet at Yellow Barn in a free performance on Monday, July 31st.

Leading up to Harriet, at concerts Thursday through Saturday audiences will have a number of opportunities to experience Paredes’ work. Paredes is one of the foremost Mexican composers of her generation. Currently based in London, she has won numerous awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rockefeller Fund for Culture. Although she collaborates frequently with Mexican artists, her sources of musical inspiration are without limits. Her instrumentation is imaginative and varied; she incorporates into her work everything from solo cello to electronics, percussion to spoken word.

In keeping with Yellow Barn’s programming philosophy, Artistic Director Seth Knopp has programmed works that speak to Paredes’ music, including Beethoven’s An Die Ferne Geliebte song cycle (with Knopp and baritone William Sharp). “Paredes and Beethoven,” Knopp said, “make good partners.” An Die Ferne Geliebte is offered an antidote to the first half of its program, which includes Paredes’ Juegos prohibidos. Paredes said, “I wrote Juegos prohibidos in response to a request to write a work that would make a reference to the political or social issues in Mexico or the Mexican community in the US. So I chose to make a reference to the children held in detention centers at the border, often held without their parents, and how their childhood is destroyed. The way I approached this is by quoting fragments of two well known Latin American children’s tunes at critical moments within the musical discourse.”

Of works such as Juegos prohibidos Seth Knopp said, “Hilda has the rare gift of placing something wholly in front of us, so that we can truly see it, rather than providing a direct comment of her own.”

On the penultimate concert of Hilda Paredes’ residency, Knopp has programmed her Zuhuy Zak (New Fire), inspired by the fires built by the Tolteca people every fifty-two years to ward off the end of the world and to mark the beginning of a new time cycle, and paired it with two mammoth undertakings: Jonathan Harvey’s Death of Light/Light of Death and Mozart’s “Kreutzer” Violin Sonata (with violinist Anthony Marwood).

Concerts are generally two and a half hours in length, including intermission. All events take place in the 70-seat Big Barn on Main Street in Putney. Tickets can be reserved and purchased online at www.yellowbarn.org, or by calling Yellow Barn at 802-387-6637. In addition to the July 31st performance of Paredes’ opera on Harriet Tubman, Thursday night concerts at Yellow Barn are free and open to the public, thanks to the generous support of a group of Putney residents in memory of Eva Mondon.