Why Women Went West (2022-2024)
a multimedia opera, with texts by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mary Hunter Austin and W.B. Yeats
Act I
I. Echo: Empathy Superimposition for video and electronics
II. Come Softly for soprano and ensemble
III. Getting this Said for spoken voice and ensemble
IV. The Birds Here (2020) for piano, voice, video and electronics
V. Owl’s Breath (2020) for bass clarinet, video and electronics
VI. The Necessary for video and electronics
VII. Hunting Weather for soprano and ensemble
Act II
I. Journey to the Land of the Moon for chamber ensemble
II. Country of Lost Borders-This Cold Wind
Lost Borders (2024) for voice, bass clarinet, piano, and percussion
III. A Prayer for my Daughter (2022) for soprano, violin, cello, and piano
IV. Water trails of the Ceriso/57 Buzzards for ensemble and projected images
V. The Consecrating Mother: I Mary, Mary by Herself (2023) for soprano, cello, and piano
VI. Medicine Wheel for chamber ensemble
VII. Going West for soprano and chamber ensemble
Commission/Premiere: With funding from Opera America and National Endowment for the Arts
Program Notes
Why Women Went West is a multi-media chamber opera in which two voices—I, Mary (soprano) and Mary by Herself, (recorded voice of soprano/spoken voice/electronics/voices of the choir) tells the unfolding narrative of a sole woman protagonist and her journey west. Why Women Went West explores controversies over human rights, water wars, early 20th-century feminist artist communities through the life of Mary Hunter Austin. Writer, feminist, conservationist, and defender of Native American and Spanish-American rights, Austin’s quest, trauma, and journey uncovered dark mysticism in the American Southwest. During her journey west, Mary encounters marriage, child birth, abuse and abandonment. She struggles with her dual existence as a kept woman (I, Mary), and her self-reliance (Mary by herself). Act II sets the scene of her heroic journey west by train, across the plains and through hostile territories of the desert southwest. She encounters the desolation and dangerous challenges of nature that inspires her artistic vision. Prayer for My Daughter reveals Mary’s difficult decision to leave her absent husband and give up her disabled daughter and place her in an institution, showing Mary’s growing distance from her family and her past–to press on, survive, on her own.
The Opera America and National Endowment for the Arts awarded Why Women Went West (2022-2023) explores controversies over human rights, water wars, early 20th-century feminist artist communities through the life of Mary Hunter Austin. Writer, feminist, conservationist, and defender of Native American and Spanish-American rights, Austin’s quest, trauma, and journey uncovered dark mysticism in the American Southwest. Resonating with concerns over marginalization of indigenous cultures, desecration of women, nature, and women’s escape from conventions through their artistic agency, this work reveals ongoing trauma of woman’s quest for autonomy. A complex, problematic story of coming to terms with one’s self as a woman in society, Why Women Went West chronicles Mary Austin’s escape from persecution to transformation of white woman’s privilege and passion for preservation of nature, history, and indigenous culture.
Perusal Score
Rental/Purchase info
Press/Awards
Opera America Discovery Grant, 2022
Performances