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Silk Moth
2015
Silk Moth Music Excerpt - Bushra El-Turk
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‘Aesthetically intelligent and culturally engaged...Silk Moth was the most significant debut overheard... a necessarily intense musical and dramatic experience...a well-wrought piece of composition, powerfully performed... an emotional, powerful work... immersive and intense.’
Jim Quilty, Beirut Daily Star
Composer Bushra El Turk
Librettist Eleanor Knight
Conductor and Musical Director Toby Purser
Director Michael Moxham
Co-Director and Movement Maria Koripas
Designer Giulia Scrimieri
Soprano Enas Massalha
Ensemble Zar
Every year an estimated 5000 women worldwide are murdered by their own families in so-called honour killings, 12 of them in the UK.
'Silkmoth' places onstage a mother. We are her guests at home. This one-woman opera raises powerful questions: what is her role in this horrific 'tradition'? Is she a victim, submissive, or coldly complicit? But she conveys that, from the moment a daughter is born, she represents shame, dishonour and sexual provocation, all of which have to be washed away into non-existence. The raw energy of the ensemble is scattered around the space, engulfing the audience and the mother, to experience this audiovisual landscape that leads to its shocking cultural conclusion.


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