Alkemie will premiere Eleanor, a brand-new queer chamber opera by Alkemie core-member Niccolo Seligmann, at the experimental New Stage Performance Space on the Upper West Side on April 24 and 25.
This semi-staged performance dives into the story of Eleanor Rykener, a gender-nonconforming person arrested in London in 1394 while presenting as a woman. We only have one surviving document about Eleanor’s life, so we can’t know her full story – but this piece uses that fragment as a starting point to explore identity, gender, and belonging in the medieval world.
With Elisse Albian (voice), Tracy Cowart (voice, harps), Ben Matus (voice, hümmelchen, recorders), David McCormick (vielle), Morgan Morse (voice), Seamus Ricci (voice), Sian Ricketts (voice, recorders, douçaines), Niccolo Seligmann (composer, vielle, psaltery), Ellie Sutherland (voice, percussion), Spiff Wiegand (voice, percussion) and Alyssa Weathersby (director, light and projection design).
Eleanor is funded in part by The Amphion Foundation, Inc.
