Girondines

About the Project

“Girondines” is a chamber opera sung in English featuring a sextet of women accompanied by piano, cello, and violin. This tragically timeless opera shares the interconnected stories of six real-life French Revolution women’s lives, deaths, and legacies spanning art, science, literature, politics, philosophy, and war. Three are guillotined: radical murderess Charlotte Corday, moderate feminist writer Madame Manon Roland, and radical feminist writer Olympe de Gouges. Three survive the political upheaval of their time: prolific portrait-painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, political theorist Madame Germaine de Staël, and inventive chemist Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze. The opera features a score composed by Sarah Melnick née Van Sciver (www.sarahvansciver.com) and a libretto written by Kirsten C. Kunkle (www.kirstenckunkle.com).

Kirsten and Sarah met working on “Shadow House,” a Philadelphia Fringe Festival opera premiere directed by librettist Brenna Geffers. Writing for and enthralled by Kirsten’s superb voice, Sarah leaped at the opportunity to collaborate again when Kirsten prompted her for opera libretto ideas featuring women in storylines that would pass the Bechdel test. Drawn to the French Revolution era murderess Charlotte Corday and her contemporaries influential in arts, letters, and science, Kirsten wrote the “Girondines” libretto by weaving six ladies’ true stories together with the added fictional element of all characters being friends and confidants in a secret society (in fact some of them knew one another, but no definitive proof exists that all six women knew everyone in the sextet). These women’s lives and work and the contemporary resonance and relevance of their troubles resonate deeply for Kirsten and Sarah as professional women, creators, scholars, mothers, entrepreneurs, and educators. With pervasive problems persisting in music and opera in particular in the form of gender and identity discrimination, sexism, ageism, racism, bias, the ‘maternal wall,’ lack of access in the training pipeline, and disparities in performer and composer distribution, Kirsten and Sarah were proud to create this feminist work. A female sextet opera is perfect (and necessary) for university-level programs and beyond. “Girondines” presents viable roles featuring arias excerptible for auditions or concerts with beautiful, accessible, and exciting 21st century American material. Kirsten and Sarah wanted to give the same opera opportunities to women as men, creating visceral, interesting, and satisfactory roles. They also wanted audiences to experience true stories focusing on women’s personal goals and desires and relationships with one another, expanding opera storytelling to paint a more complete picture from women’s perspectives.