Stephanie Lamprea: The Open Fund
Short Project Title: The Glass Cage: a staged interdisciplinary opera
Concise Description: The Glass Cage is a staged interdisciplinary opera for soprano vocalist and live- and pre-recorded electronics, featuring real-time audio and spatial interactive video projection art. Setting and interpreting historical texts by Juana Inés de la Cruz, Teresa of Avila, and Rose of Lima, the work will explore connections between mysticism, affliction, and female empowerment in 16th-century Spain and Latin America. The opera will be composed by Stephanie Lamprea, with a libretto by Jennifer Williams, video projection art by Kirsty Anderson, and sound design by Alistair MacDonald. The opera will be produced and performed by Lamprea (soprano vocalist), MacDonald (electronics), Roxana Cole (dramaturg), and Reese Manglicmot (producer). Treating the operatic voice as inherently technological, this new work will showcase innovative ways to combine audio and visual technologies with staged operatic performance, revealing embodied aesthetic experiences of mystical reclamation, free will, and the ecstatic as tangible, rapturous, and uplifting.
Bio: Colombian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea is an architect of new sounds and expressions as a
performer and composer. Trained as an operatic coloratura, Stephanie uses her voice as a mechanism of
avant-garde performance art, creating ‘maniacal shifts of vocal production and character… like an icepick
through the skull’ (Jason Eckardt). Her work has been described as ‘sonorous’ (The Guardian), ‘divinely
deranged’ (Herald Scotland), and ‘performance art of the highest caliber’ (PopMatters.com). She has
performed for Sound Scotland, Southbank Centre, Helsinki Music Centre, and Casa da Música, and
collaborated with Riot Ensemble, London Sinfonietta, International Contemporary Ensemble, and Post Coal
Prom Queen.