Lisa Logan on opera's pigeonholed female characters
Composer Lisa Logan
Ahead of the world premiere of Brontë The Opera on 13th September, we dropped into an East London dance studio to chat with composer Lisa Logan and director Katharina Kastening about how the Brontë sisters’ struggle fed into their writing, and the continued relevance of their story today.
Based on Polly Teale’s play, Brontë The Opera tracks the story of the Brontë sisters from when they were children all the way to the end of their lives. Through their own characters coming to life around them, the opera explores the inspiration behind their writing and their influences.
“When I choose an opera project, I feel a duty as a female composer to make sure that female characters are more representative,” Lisa starts.
“I tire in opera of female characters in history, and even with some male composers today, being prostitutes and mistresses. I find that really frustrating as a woman. I feel that opera in comparison to theatre currently is really poor in terms of that representation.”
Katharina, freelance Stage Director and Staff Director at Oper Frankfurt, adds, “even the ‘strong’ female characters in opera are often already pigeonholed because they work as a prostitute, or are a courtesan.”
“This opera is really exciting to work on. I had a moment in rehearsal where I was looking round and thought, this is really weird and wonderful – to have a scene featuring three, fully-fleshed out main female characters and their brother, instead of a room full of men with one or two women, one of which is a maid and the other a mistress. It is quite special to see female characters in opera whose decisions aren’t led by men.”
Director Katharina Kastening
“Even a person like Charlotte Brontë, who was very strict and the ‘mothering’ type, still allows herself to live her creative freedom – differently than others, but even someone who was the most conservative was still able to live that life, which was really radical.”
This is Lisa’s second opera. Her first, A Silver Spoon, followed the story of Princess Diana and Dodi, with the libretto taking inspiration from Diana’s strengths in the way that she rebelled against the system.
“Because I’m so aware of the full range of personalities of women in history, I feel like it is my duty to be picking the characters which have been under-represented in opera,” Lisa explains.
“The Brontë sisters, at the time, couldn’t even publicly say that they were writing a novel yet they still got their work out there – and I thought that there’s such strength in that.”
“When I first chatted to [writer] Polly [Teale] about the project, she found an analogy with female composers in her play – she found parallels between the Brontë sisters writing and having to pretend to be male to get their work published, and the struggles female composers still face trying to get big opera works out there.”
Brontë The Opera premieres on the 13th September 2023 in Dalston’s Arcola Theatre, with a preview show available on the 12th and additional performances on the 15th and 16th. Tickets start at £12 and are available by clicking the button below.
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