Shiva Feshareki's DIVINE FEMININE

Kate Molleson introduces Shiva Feshareki's DIVINE FEMININE, hot from its world premiere a couple of nights ago.

For her latest project, Shiva Feshareki has joined forces with the librettist, Karen McCarthy Woolf, choreographer Rebecca Namgauds and creative producer and singer Emma Tring to create DIVINE FEMININE, an immersive spatial opera which invokes ancient feminine deities.
As they sing and recite, the voices of the characters of the opera are transformed electronically on turntables and via a live‑sculpted 360° soundscape of “divine” geometric spatialisation.

Drawing on the duplexities of the Goddess, ancient vocal, and folk traditions from Iran, pre-Christian Ireland, Native America, West and Central Africa, Nordic Europe, Gregorian Europe, Bulgaria, Byzantium, and Assyrian Mesopotamia, the work is a trance-led invocation of transformation and connection to nature and the cosmos.

Karen McCarthy Woolf's libretto includes ballads, anonymous Afghan women's landays and incantatory ghazal from Persia.

As she says: "... In The Divine Feminine we are using our voices to reach up and out, to an inclusive pantheon of deities from a plethora of cultures around the world, in the hope that this connection might do something to correct the patriarchal mess in which we find ourselves!"

Performed at the church of St-Martin-in-the-Fields by the upper voices of the BBC Singers, turntabalist Shiva Fesharekia and singers Emma Tring, Karin de Fleyt, Mary Pearce, with Vox Next Gen conducted by Lucy Goddard.

Co-commissioned by BBC Radio 3.