Composer:
Melissa Dunphy

Librettist:
Goldfinger

Composer website:
https://www.melissadunphy.com/compositions.php

Composer contact:

Performance forces:
7 solo voices — chamber ensemble

Length:
1:00

Languages:

Notes:
Alice Tierney explores the mythic stories surrounding the death of the real-life 19th-Century “dissipated woman” Alice Tierney. Tierney was found hanging by her own petticoats on a fence in a seedy Philadelphia neighborhood early one morning in 1880. Despite suspicious circumstances, the death was ruled accidental and never investigated by police. But who was Alice? Can four grad students investigating the site discover the truth? Commissioned by the Oberlin Opera Commissioning Program through the generosity of Elizabeth and Justus ’71 Schlichting, Alice Tierney will be workshopped with Oberlin Conservatory students and premiered on campus in 2023. Dunphy was one of seven winners of a 2020 OPERA America Discovery Grant, presented to female composers with the intention of increasing gender parity across the opera industry. That grant will support the development of Alice Tierney at Oberlin.