UNC Charlotte’s Department of Music, along with Charlotte New Music, is hosting the world premiere performance of Hebionna (Snake Woman), a Japanese opera by composer Asako Hirabayashi.
The performance takes place on Monday, June 27th, 2022, at 7 p.m., at Rowe Recital Hall, within the Rowe Arts Building, 9119 University Road, Charlotte. The closest parking for visitors is Cone Deck 1. This interactive campus map will help you.
This event is free and open to the public.
More information from UNC Charlotte:
The production features UNC Charlotte voice professor Brian Arreola in the lead tenor role of “Yoshizo”; music students and recent alumni Chrystle Villaflor, Sophia Chacon Marmolejos, Christian Souza, and Zach Voigt as a chorus of “villagers”; adjunct professor Alan Yamamoto as the narrator; and cello professor Mira Frisch as a member of the instrumental ensemble.
Inspired by Japanese folk tales, Hebionna tells the story of a country man who saves a snake caught by a trap. Later, the snake, disguised as a woman, shows her gratitude to him. They fall in love, get married, and start a family. But when the villagers learn that the woman is in fact a snake, violence ensues.
“Hebionna is about diversity, discrimination, segregation, unconditional love, benevolence, and the coexistence of nature and human beings,” writes Hirabayashi, who wrote both the libretto and the music.
Sung in Japanese, the opera introduces Japanese culture and features the Japanese instrument, the shamisen, performed by guest artist Momokusu Iwata (pictured). Soprano Momoko Niemi Tanno sings the role of Miko, the snake woman.
Asako Hirabayashi is a Japanese composer and harpsichordist based in Minneapolis. She has won numerous grants and awards, including the 2009 McKnight Fellowship for Performing Musicians and two Minnesota State Arts Board’s Artist Initiative grants as a soloist. As a composer, she won a 2016 McKnight Fellowship for Composers, several first prizes in the Alienor International Harpsichord Composition Competition (6th, 7th and 8th consecutively), and the NHK International Song Writing Competition in Japan. She was awarded the 2012 Jerome Fund for New Music by the American Composers Forum to write her first concert opera, Yuki-onna (Snow Witch), which premiered in 2015.