Southern Crossings: A New Chamber Opera

Southern Crossings is a new chamber opera of five scenes. It takes audiences back in time, to 1838, when the famed astronomer, John Herschel and his wife, Margaret, are about to return to England from Cape Town where, two years earlier, they had hosted Charles Darwin on his return voyage on the Beagle. Darwin took inspiration from Herschel to tackle ‘the mystery of mysteries’; the Herschels welcomed Darwin as a fellow abolitionist. Nonetheless, the dinner was not a great success. While packing with these former slaves-turned-servants, whom the Herschels have manumitted and who now await their freedom in a period of mandatory apprenticeship, Margaret recalls the dinner in the dream-image of what might have been. She is exchanging letters with Caroline Herschel, herself one of the most important astronomers in Europe. They discuss their desires as women of family and women of science. As they do so, Leah and January have their own conversation about what they overheard that evening (tales of people abducted from Tierra del Fuego and animals they have never seen), and what they desire for a future after bondage. With music by Zaid Jabri, and a libretto by Yvette Christiansë and Rosalind Morris