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.
Composer and librettist Niccolo Seligmann (they/them) brings a deeply personal lens to the work, and the role of Eleanor will be premiered by non-binary soprano Elisse Albian. Seligmann says that “Queer and trans people have always been here, and Eleanor Rykener’s story proves this. Celebrating the few queer and trans ancestors who’ve made it into the historical record is an important way of connecting with our communal past and gives us hope for a queer and trans future.”
Both concerts will include a Q&A with the composer and performers, and a post-concert reception. For tickets and more information, please visit https://www.alkemie.org/eleanor.
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.
A restless collective of medieval experimentalists, the Flatbush-based band Alkemie recently gained recognition beyond Brooklyn with their soundtrack for the video game Pentiment (directed by Obsidian studios and published by Xbox) and their albums a fine companion and Love to My Liking. Comprised of singer-performers playing two dozen instruments–including vielles (early fiddles), harps, psaltery, scheitholt (early zither), recorders, douçaines & dulcians (early double reeds), bagpipes, and percussion, they have been presented locally and nationally by the Amherst Early Music Festival, Arizona Early Music Society, Brooklyn Public Library, Cambridge Society for Early Music, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, Five Boroughs Music Festival, Johns Hopkins Program in Arts, Humanities & Health, Music Before 1800, and the Berkeley Early Music festival. They have also presented educational and outreach programs in NYC in collaboration with the Morgan Library, The MET, and The Met Cloisters
Alkemie’s upcoming spring concerts include: a mini-concert before Caroline Golum’s new film “Revelations of Divine Love”; our joyful May Day festival in Prospect Park; and a collaboration with the Brooklyn-based collective ChamberQUEER.
