Event overview
World Premiere of complete Trilogy
Imoinda – A Story of Love and Slavery is an Opera based on Joan Anim-Addo's Libretto Imoinda: Or She Who Will Lose Her Name (2008) which is a rewriting of Aphra Behn's novella Oroonoko: or The Royal Slave a True History (1688). Imoinda is the first Libretto to be written by an African-Caribbean woman.
Anim-Addo's re-writing tells the story of Oroonoko's lover Imoinda, a young African princess who is doubly enslaved, once by her king into marriage and then sold into the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The play focuses on her experience with the slave masters and the birth of a child who symbolizes the triumphant survival of African-heritage people forcibly transplanted in the Caribbean Diaspora. In subversively re-writing Behn's 1688 proto-novel, this woman-centered narrative highlights the importance of women as repositories of cultural and historical memory, ancestral forgiveness and the maternal founding of the "Creolised Nation".
Imoinda has relevance today as it has become clear that slavery is also a modern-day tragedy. The opera is seen from Imoinda’s point of view and shows that women slaves were even more powerless than the men.
The opera is performed by a cast of black singers also relevant because there is such little work for black singers today outside of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.
The libretto by the Grenadian poet and author, Joan Anim Addo has a strong flavour of the African spoken word. The music by Odaline de la Martinez is influenced by Afro-Cuban culture.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 27 Feb 2019 | 7:30pm - 10:30pm | |
| 1 Mar 2019 | 7:30pm - 10:30pm | |
| 2 Mar 2019 | 7:30pm - 10:30pm |
Accessibility
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