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We follow composer Dr Laura Bowler, librettist Laura Lomas, and director Katie Mitchell as they prepare a radical new work on the theme of sexual violence, The Blue Woman, at the Royal Opera House.

The opera canon has a cruel history of sexual violence towards women - from Don Giovanni to the Rape of Lucretia. Either as part of the opera as written, or in contemporary stagings where it鈥檚 added in after the fact by the director.

For musicologist Dr Margaret Cormier, sexual violence or the threat of sexual violence is omnipresent in the canon as a plot device, although often in a veiled way. Today the beauty of the music can sometimes be used to excuse more problematic elements of these historical works, but when rape or sexual assault is staged flippantly or uncritically, productions can perpetuate harmful rape myths or seem to condone the mysogeny of the composer鈥檚 era. But calling it out and drawing it to the surface is also fraught with risks.

New opera works by women, however, are addressing the theme of sexual violence very differently, with a focus on the survivor鈥檚 experience and the aftermath of trauma. Ellen Reid is an LA-based composer and sound artist who most recently created a public soundwalk in Regent鈥檚 Park for the Wellcome Trust. Her opera P R I S M won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2019. She describes her approach to a story about the impact of sexual assault through sound.

Thumbprint is a 2014 chamber opera composed by Kamala Sankaram based on the story of Mukht膩r M膩'墨. In 2002, Mukht膩r was gang-raped in Pakistan by a local clan as a form of 鈥渉onour revenge鈥� but took her attackers to court, and is now a human rights activist. Kamala explains how they chose to portray but not to musicalise the attack.

Producer: Victoria Ferran
A Just Radio production for 主播大秀 Radio 4