DIVIDE LIGHT
an Emily Dickinson opera
Divide Light is an opera collaboration by Originator/Creative Director Lesley Dill and Composer Richard Marriott. It contemporizes the works of poet Emily Dickinson, linking the groundbreaking ideas of the mid-19th century American Transcendental movement to innovations and global concerns in today’s rapidly changing world.
Divide Light examines the nature of emotion and story-telling in contemporary society through the lens of Dickinson’s 19th century philosophical poetics. It challenges and expands the traditional opera format through its sparser and more closely developed presentation. The opera features eight operatic voices, and a string quintet. Its striking visual elements feature large projections on a back screen of images combining Dill’s edgy and evocative black-and-white photographs with text from Dickinson’s poetry. Poems stream, scroll, flash, twirl, pop out, fade in and rise up on the screen. The performers sing Dickinson’s words and wear them scrawled across their costumes.
“The depth and breadth of Dill’s absorption of Dickinson’s words is evident in every aspect of the opera, as it is in much of her life’s work. . . one is dazzled, but not blinded, and one hardly dares to breathe.”
Emily Seelbinder, The Emily Dickinson Journal
“As a scholar who has long been fascinated (and occasionally appalled) by musical and visual ‘readings’ of Dickinson’s work, I hereby declare the opera a tour de force.”
Emily Seelbinder, The Emily Dickinson Journal
Selections from Divide Light
Divide Light Opera is a performance piece/opera based entirely on the poetic texts of Emily Dickinson. Created on a Ford Foundation Grant by visual artist Lesley Dill, composed by Richard Marriott. Performed in NYC by the New Camerata Opera Company in 2018. These are excerpts from the full length film by award winning filmmaker Ed Robbins.
