Opera for women’s chorus and immersive media (2026) – 43’00”
Act 1
1.1 He isn’t well (i)
1.2 He isn’t well (ii) – Interlude
1.3 He isn’t well (iii)
1.4 Advise your son
Act 2
2.1 Grief
2.2 Empty Space
2.3 What if?
2.4 The silent lands / She is dead
Act 3
3.1 Careful now (i)
3.2 Orpheus Plays
3.3 Careful now (ii)
3.4 The waters of Lethe
Act 4
4.1 Before the court
4.2 A road leading home
4.3 The wind
4.4 She’s behind you
The sound of grief is a 43-min immersive media opera written by composer-in-residence Freida Abtan for the Peninsula Women’s Chorus (PWC). The production premiered at the chorus’ spring season concerts April 17-19, 2026 at Meets the Eye Studio outside of San Francisco and was broadcasted via livestream. The score is written for treble divissi and features largescale video accompaniment as well as electronic sound design.
The sound of grief tells the story of Orpheus from Greek mythology: a musician of outstanding prowess who travels to the underworld to rescue his bride, Euridice. The narrative celebrates the power of art as a mechanism for reshaping reality and warns against the hubris of trying to escape one’s fate. In the first movement, Orpheus grieves and disrupts the natural order of all things through the emotion in his music. The chorus pleads with his mother, the muse Calliope, to intercede. The three fates command her to destroy him if she cannot stop his laments. Moved by her son’s sadness, in the second movement Calliope suggests a possible solution: to plead with the god of the underworld, Hades, and ask him to return Euridice to the world of the living. The chorus warns Orpheus to accept his wife’s death or to kill himself to join her. The third movement describes the perils of Orpheus’ journey through the underworld where he is surrounded by ‘shades’ who ignore him until he plays his lyre. Finally, in the last movement, Hades’ demands that Orpheus leaves the underworld and promises that if he can do so without gazing behind him Euridice will follow him. The story ends with his fateful look backwards, when Orpheus, now immortal, faces eternity without his wife.
The visual materials for the production were created through a significant workshop process with the chorus, video from which became the source material for the production. Abtan choreographed the chorus through scenes from the narrative at a chroma-key video production facility. The production’s narrative and score was formed around these improvisations and reflects the deep spirit of collaboration that took place within the workshops. Abtan also recorded musical experiments to shape the score-in-development and from which to create the electronic music included in the production. The resulting audiovisual media is tightly tied to the score which must be performed with a click track to guide the conductor towards synchronization. The production incorporates the physical staging and performance of the chorus as well as the created audio and video within its narrative conceit. In future, production video will need to be adapted to the physical realities of differing projection environments within performance venues to account for the chorus’ staging as well as for the viewpoints of the audience.
The Sound of Grief was supported in part by funding from the Carnegie Mellon University College of Fine Art’s Fund for Research and Creativity.
The program from the production is available for download. As is the score.
“The story of Orpheus has been my favorite since I was young: the mythical musician who travels to the underworld to rescue his love, only to lose her at the last second to his own unchecked impulse. If my teenage-self enjoyed the story’s romanticism and deep confirmation of art’s importance, I now see other facets to the story. Yes, it’s about the power of art, as well as the things we do for love (not for those we love), but it’s also about acceptance and grief. In many ways the story outlines the boundaries of creation between mortals and the gods. The gods are defined by their absolute power to change reality. As humans we are able to examine and interpret the world around us, to feel and to act, to add to the world and to effect change within it. What we cannot do is overwrite what is, or, to make it not have been. Orpheus’s power bridges that divide. His music inspires inanimate objects to move and rewrites human desire, but it accomplishes these acts through empathy, not sorcery. His art translates his emotions so deeply that others have no choice but to inhabit his experience. It is empathy that defines the true nature of music. All art communicates subjectivity, but it’s music that offers emotional detail when paired with other mediums. It colors our understanding of events without filling in their nature, shaping our experience rather than defining it.
Many writers have fed my understanding of this story. I took heavy inspiration from Neil Gaiman’s depiction of the myth in his Sandman comics, whose focus is on the plight of Orpheus’ father when faced with his son’s request to visit the underworld. I also took inspiration from Rilke’s poem Orpheus, Euridice, Hermes, in which Euridice has faded into breath, unable and unwilling to return to her former consciousness or even to perceive the world from before her death. Lastly, I have taken direct inspiration from a request to tell my favorite story received some thirty years ago by my old, dear friends Alyssa and Nola Semczyszyn. This was the story that spilled out of me when I was asked, and I promised to one day write it as an opera. Our friend, Matthew Risk, pointed out to us that there is a story in every culture where someone attempts to defeat death through love. The ending of the story isn’t fixed, only the desire. While other cultures might end the story differently, to the ancient Greeks fate was something that could not be defeated. I don’t yet know if I agree.”
Freida Abtan, April 2026