Jacqueline, the Opera
Jacqueline is a powerful opera for cellist Matt Haimovitz and soprano Marnie Breckenridge, exploring the talent and tragedy of Jacqueline du Pré and her relationship with her cello. The opera animates the struggle of du Pré’s changing identity as the one thing that most defined her is cut away by Multiple Sclerosis. Brought to life by two contemporary virtuosi, celebrated American soprano Marnie Breckenridge plays Jacqueline, and former du Pré protégé and world renowned cellist Matt Haimovitz plays her constant companion, her cello.
Inspired by the structure and emotional landscape of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, composer Luna Pearl Woolf and Librettist Royce Vavrek create an intense two-hander, told in thematically linked fragments, charting a course of great prodigy and great tragedy. Drawing on the myth of Samson, the biblical hero whose supernatural strength was shorn from him at the height of his powers, as well as Haimovitz’s and others’ personal recollections of du Pre, the form of the work echoes du Pre’s iconic interpretation of the Elgar, using the concerto’s four-movement structure to navigate a prismatic and passionate, if all too short, life in music.
In the press
“It’s great tragedy, this opera…The heights from which Jacqueline du Pré fell – or from which she was pushed – are operatic in scale…There are in fact two characters in this opera, and the second is Jacqueline’s cello. Cellist Matt Haimovitz is on stage for nearly the entire work, mirroring Breckenridge as both a musical and dramatic element. Brilliantly, his textless character has an arc; Jacqueline’s cello is her best friend, her big love, the part of her that stays constant and capable…”
— Globe And Mail
“A brilliant, wrenching chamber work…flings us headfirst body and soul into the centre of towering virtuosity and pain that was and always will be du Pré…Jacqueline is a profoundly moving opera, one that shreds the emotions…”
— Opera Going Toronto
“Inspired by Jacqueline’s iconic interpretation of the Elgar concerto, Jacqueline also references Haimovitz’s personal recollections of du Pré, having spent time as a young prodigy under her wing shortly before she died. In Pearl Woolf’s inventive score, virtuosity is demanded for both artists in their interpretation of one of the world’s greatest virtuosi.”