Woolf: Jacqueline

Jacqueline is a powerful, award-winning new opera that dives into the real-life struggle between famed cellist Jacqueline du Pré and the multiple sclerosis that ravaged her body, mind, and talent – robbing her of her identity, her breathtaking musical gift, and ultimately her life.

The story is brought to life by celebrated American soprano Marnie Breckenridge (as Jacqueline) and former du Pré protégé and world-renowned cellist Matt Haimovitz, playing the role of her constant companion: her cello. GRAMMY-nominated composer Luna Pearl Woolf and Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Royce Vavrek chart the development of great prodigy and, ultimately, great tragedy. Told in four movements – I. Star Birth; II. Super Nova; III. Meteorite; IV. Impact – the opera references Haimovitz’s personal recollections of du Pré herself. 

Colorful and at times funny, raw, joyful and audacious, the form of the work echoes du Pré’s iconic interpretation of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, using the concerto’s four-movement structure to navigate a prismatic and passionate, if all too short, life in music.

 “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

 “Jacqueline is the thrilling result of real simplicity…stripping away the inessential to reveal a moving story free from ego…[an] extraordinary piece, one that deservesan unquestioned place in the 21st-century canon.”
The Globe and Mail