The Sisters
The Latvian Society
531 N. 7th St.
January 31, 2025
Have you ever heard a typewriter sing?
In The Sisters, a new chamber opera by Patricia Wallinga, the antique keyboard is recast as a musical instrument — and the words of dead poets are transposed into song.
I saw an early staging of that show during an open workshop on the production. It was a chance to experience the ceremony of creative process, which happens to be a central theme of Wallinga’s piece.
The working set was sparse: four black metal chairs sat on stage alongside four music stands; a fifth chair held a typewriter. The opera opens with a melodic conversation between a pianist and a woman at the typewriter. When the pianist performs a phrase off stage, the woman turns into a poet, punching out a rhythm in response, emphasizing her genre’s inherently lyrical quality.
The story is based on a poem itself, also titled The Sisters by Amy Lowell, wherein the famous writer imagines herself speaking with several late poets who inspired her art. In that poem, Lowell peers at the power of her predecessors in order to contemplate the energy her own words will hold after she’s gone. The lyrics of the contemporary show, drafted more than a century after the original publication of The Sisters, were patched together from lines architected by Lowell as well as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sappho and Emily Dickinson.
Lowell called those three women her “spiritual relations,” describing them at one point as “near frightfully near.” When the actress who played Lowell belted those words, I heard the rain pounding on the roof. I got chills. I knew what she meant; I felt spirits close by. The legacies of all four artists had been reborn into the room.
Wallinga edited the original poem such that Lowell’s references to the three other poets are answered with verses from Sappho, Browning or Dickinson. Over time, Lowell’s call and response morphs into a four-person performance. Lowell is no longer reciting others’ lines but rather communing directly with her muses.
In a talk back that took place after the performance, composer Patricia Wallinga told us that collaging the various authors’ poetry together was an emotional endeavor: “Sometimes it felt like a fun jigsaw puzzle, sometimes it felt like cracking my chest open and performing open heart surgery.”
The quilt of stanzas explores the self-doubt that separately plagued each of these artists as women in a patriarchal society — and the heroism that each passed down to the next through their work (Dickinson, Wallinga noted, kept in her home a framed photo of Browning.) Wallinga continues that chain of creation through a composition that transposes Lowell’s sense of poetic lineage into an operatic refrain: “I only hope that possibly some day / Some other woman with an itch for writing / May turn to me as I have turned to you / And chat with me a brief few minutes.”
While each of the poets featured in the opera hold their own style, talents, hardships and name, Wallinga points to how they are all part of one dialogue of artistry. By pulling their poetry off the printed page, Wallinga melds their stories into one wave of sound. The resuscitated heartbeat of their work pulses with dramatic generosity — and even the humble typewriter gets its due.
The Sisters is slated to officially start its stage run this summer.
