Swiss-born Isabelle Eberhardt (1877 – 1904) was a maverick of her day. Adventurer, journalist and deeply spiritual, she is the subject of celebrated contemporary American composer and librettist Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek’s first opera, Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt.
Premiered in New York in 2012, it is the first of many collaborations between Mazzoli and Vavrek – local audiences had the fortune of seeing their devastatingly confronting Breaking the Waves last year, presented by Opera Australia.
In its Australian premiere presented by fringe opera outfit Lyric Opera at a far more modest scale, Song from the Uproar reveals itself as an intriguing work, sometimes conflictingly frustrating but awash with poetic energy.
Created in a series of vignettes across 75 minutes, the work references episodes in Eberhardt’s short but bursting life that champions her fierce independence on one hand while, on the other, unveiling her wide-eyed journey to North Africa of self-discovery and her own personal demons she faced along the way. Both in its composition and director Beng Oh’s staging, an economical, minimalist approach is evident.
Drawing on Eberhardt’s journals for its inspiration, both in Eberhardt’s original French but mostly in English translation, Mazzoli and Vavrek’s libretto is condensed to what would be a reading time of just several minutes.
Repetition of line and its often abstruse nature might feel like its enemy at times but Mazzoli’s score provides richness and variation that incorporate passages of warm lyricism pitted with jarring dissonance and indie rock influences, including extended musical punctuations between episodes.
Written for a mixed quintet, electric guitar plays side by side piano, flute, clarinet and double-bass with Artistic Director Patrick Burns balancing the scores copious time signature demands skilfully. Splendidly played, it is also accompanied by scratchy audio recording, antique transmitter-like, that perhaps is intended to amplify Eberhardt’s distance from her origins.
In what amounts to a solo principal role, mezzo-soprano Olivia Federow-Yemm gives a dramatically drawn encounter with its protagonist. On stage for virtually its entirety, Federow-Yemm is beguilingly unerring in her sensitively focused performance in rendering the grief and battle with loneliness after the loss of her family, navigating Isabelle’s happiness in discovering Islam, to the anguish and anger at her lover’s betrayal, attempted suicide and resignation and comfort at her death.
Federow-Yemm is bolstered by strong young artists Lisette Bolton, Leah Phillips, Olive Cullen, Tim Daly and Daniel Felton who add ethereal support both in vocals and choreographed movements that reflect the work’s poetic style.
Both in opening and closing scenes, their slo-mo turns across the stage is quite beautiful in its evocation of rolling waves into which Federow-Yemm is swept into in a finale symbolic of her death in a flash flood at the age of 27. In between, they’re a playful group of children, worshippers of Islam in prayer, soldiers muscling their bravado and hooded assassin-like figures.
Despite the spareness of text, text forms the key visual element in the production’s creative design. Projected on a long painted brick wall background at fortyfivedownstairs, the libretto is brought to life as it’s sung to a spiffy PowerPoint presentation that sees it magnify, reduce, fade away, fall and multiply in montage, complimented by lighting designer Shane Grant’s gently washed colours and sacral-like moods.
Other than that, there’s little more than the luggage that Eberhardt carries around with her and an array of costumes that neatly outline each episode in Adrienne Chisholm’s contribution as set and costume designer.
For all the awe that is felt in experiencing Eberhardt’s totally unconventional life as it unfolds in Mazzoli and Vavrek’s work and Oh’s minimalist staging, an aura of disquietude that leans into melancholy filters through, giving rise to thoughts that Eberhardt’s itinerant life might be seen more as a means of survival than viewed through the falsity of a romantic lens.
Song from the Uproar won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but, at the very least, it should leave a satisfyingly niggling sensation after experiencing it. As a vital part of exploring opera’s significance and potential, contemporary works have a special place in the art form and Lyric Opera’s courage to present such works is to be commended.
Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt
fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
Performance: Saturday 18 October 2025
Season continues to 25 October 2025
Bookings: www.fortyfivedownstairs.com
For more information, visit: www.lyricopera.com.au for details.
Images: Olivia Federow-Yemm stars as Isabelle Eberhardt – photo by Jodie Hutchinson | Olivia Federow-Yemm with Cast of Song from the Uproar – photo by Jodie Hutchinson | Olivia Federow-Yemm with Cast of Song from the Uproar – photo by Jodie Hutchinson
Review: Paul Selar