ALL HAIL THE SCREAM QUEENS!

Coming up on Saturday, October 5th, New Wave Opera is heading to Mendelssohns classical music bar for an evening of silly & seriously spooky vocal music. The event, Scream Queens, will feature selections exclusively from living composers - including collaborations with living librettists, as well as modern settings of classic texts by authors like Edgar Allan Poe and Lewis Carroll.

Today we're taking a closer look at the origins of this event, as well as introducing you to a few scream queens of our own!

So why SCREAM QUEENS?
In the spirit of the Halloween season, we've named this event in honor of both the amazing actresses who have played "scream queen" roles in horror films and as well as a lighthearted reference to treble voices being thought of as "screaming" out high notes.

Lili Dagover in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Women have long played prominent roles in horror films, though their characters can range widely from "boobs in distress" to deeply complex and compelling characters. The silent film era, with their more exaggerated and almost dance-like movements to compensate for the lack of spoken dialogue, included films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922). One of the first famous film scream roles with sound came from Fay Wray in 1933's King Kong, particularly when she is snatched from the building and brought up the tower.

Fay Wray in King Kong (1933)

While "Hitchcock blondes" like Janet Leigh certainly did their share of screaming throughout the decades, the 1960's and 1970's brought a slew of horror genres, both in the United States and abroad. Marilyn Burns' harrowing portrayal of Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Jamie Lee Curtis's iconic Laurie Strode from Halloween (1978) are among some of the more famous examples from the United States, but the giallo films (a genre spawned from Italian crime-mystery pulp novels with yellow covers [giallo means yellow in Italian]) brought scream queens out of "pure horror" films and into mystery and crime with films like Blood and Black Lace (1964), Orgasmo (1969), Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key​ (1972), All the Colors of the Dark​ (1972), and giallo-king Dario Argento's films like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) and Suspiria (1977).

Marilyn Burns

Edwige Fenech

Jamie Lee Curtis, posing with photo of her mom, Janet Leigh

By the 1980's, horror had become a rich, varied, and well-established genre. While there was certainly its share of sexploitation and racist tropes, horror had also meaningfully confronted and explored a number of social issues with films like Night of the Living Dead (1968), Rosemary's Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), Black Christmas (1974), The Stepford Wives (1975), and Carrie (1976) - to name a few. Scream queen roles proliferated throughout the 80's, 90's, and early thousands, seeing stars like Debbie Rochon, Neve Campbell (star of several Troma Production horror films), Sheryl Lee (Twin Peaks), Bollywood's Bipasha Basu (Raaz [2002] and Aatma [2014]), and Shauna Macdonald (The Descent [2005] is NOT for the faint of heart!), while continuing to defy sexist tropes and push & transform the power of scream queens.

How is this relevant to New Wave Opera?

New Wave Opera is committed to not only sharing stories by living composers and librettists, but also seeks to emphasize treble voices, which are largely underused in standard opera repertoire. While some audience favorites like Carmen and La Boheme feature women in leading and supporting roles, the quantity of actual roles available to women - and the stories that are represented - still leave a lot to be desired (see a fascinating article on this topic by the Guardian here); not to mention, of course, the near-absence of compelling roles for older voices and trans and non-binary vocalists.

From a study by mezzo-soprano Brooke Larimer, showing the breakdown by voice type of the top 25 performed operas

New Wave Opera's programming this season heavily features treble voices, and includes the work of several dozen composers & librettists whose identities have been underrepresented in opera. We love a good horror story, the operatic form, and so many of the classic tales & characters who got us interested in music as storytelling - but we've had enough of the death-by-love-or-tuberculosis! We are ready for opera's Laurie Strode, Sally Hardesty, Carrie - and new stories and roles that better reflect our modern understanding of what it means to be a fully-realized character.

Meet Our Scream Queens!

New Wave Opera is proud to announce the cast for our upcoming program at Mendelssohns classical music bar, SCREAM QUEENS: AN EVENING OF VOICES IN TREBLE, on Saturday, October 5th from 8-10pm.

Pianist Hannah Early (left) joins mezzo Lisa Neher and sopranos Lindsey Rae Johnson and Carolyn Quick for an evening of fun & spooky art songs, opera arias and duets, and more. Featured selections include works by New Wave Opera composers Kimberly Osberg & Lisa Neher, plus selections by Melissa Dunphy & Nikita Gill, Jodi Goble & Basil Considine, Monica Chew & Sandra Flores-Strand, William Bolcom, Jake Heggie, Portland's own Dianne Davies and Carolyn Quick, and more. Read more about the artists on our bios page!

Registration for the event not required, so drop by anytime between 8 and 10 to hear the music and enjoy a pun-derful cocktail or delicious bites. The only thing higher than our notes is the iconic high-rise stage, so be sure to drop by and check out this musician-favorite spot for yourself.

We hope you can join us for a screaming-good time!

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SCREAM QUEENS
A NIGHT OF VOICES IN TREBLE!
WHEN: Saturday, October 5 | 8 to late
WHERE: Mendelssohns | 3955 N Mississippi Ave | Portland, OR | 97227
COST: $10 cover charge at the door
ADDITIONAL DETAILS: Ages 21+ only. No RSVP required! Food & Drink available for purchase from the bar. Visit the Mendelssohns website for full menu & accommodation information. 

​Learn more on the event page linked here.