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LIST OF PARTICIPANTS BIOGRAPHIES YOUNG WOMEN OPERA MAKERS RESIDENCY JULY 1 — JULY 6, 2021

MENTORS PARTICIPANTS

STAGE DIRECTOR CLARA BAGET KATIE MITCHELL CHARLOTTE CORDEROY ANA CUÉLLAR VELASCO LANQING DING GIULIANA KIERSZ JUTA PRANULYTE CONSTANÇA SIMAS MATHILDE SOULHEBAN JOSEPHINE STEPHENSON KAPITOLINA TCVETKOVA LOUISE VIGNAUD AMANDA WILKIN

3 MENTOR KATIE MITCHELL STAGE DIRECTOR UNITED KINGDOM

After studying literature, British artist Katie Mitchell began her career as an assistant in theatres, including the Royal Shakespeare Company. That’s where she directed, upon returning in 1996 from a cycle of residences in Eastern European (and particularly Polish) theatres, ’s The Phoenician Women, which was enthusiastically received. Her company, Classics on a shoestring, then started creating ever more successful and acclaimed shows, reimagining classics from Greece, Britain, Scandinavia, and Russia and giving them new life through her sense of rhythm and use of music, dance, and video in her directions. Working with the most prestigious British and German theatres, Katie Mitchell has also led projects for television or the opera, and experimented with innovative forms, adapting novels for the theatre and collaborating with her contemporaries such as the writer or the scientist Stephen Emmott, with whom she created Ten Billion in 2012. Katie Mitchell has been an Associate Director at the RSC, National Theatre and The . She was awarded an OBE in 2009 for services to drama and has recently been appointed as the Visiting Chair in Opera Studies at Oxford University for 2016-2017. Recent theatre includes: Anatomy of a Suicide (Royal Court); 4.48 Psychosis (Schauspielhaus, Hamburg); The Maids (Toneelgroep, Amsterdam); Shadows (Eurydice Speaks) (Schaubuhne, Berlin); Cleansed (National Theatre); Ophelia’s Room (Schaubuhne, Berlin and Royal Court); Reisende auf einem Bein (Schauspielhaus, Hamburg); (Schauspielhaus, Hamburg); Brandstichter Festival: a remounting of five previous productions of Katie Mitchell’s work (Stadschouwburg, Amsterdam); 2071 (Royal Court); (); The Forbidden Zone ( and Schaubuhne, Berlin); A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (Vienna ); Lungs, The Yellow Wallpaper (Schaubuhne, Berlin); Everything Else You Know from the Movies (Schauspielhaus, Hamburg); Say it with Flowers, The Trial of Ubu (); Night Train (Schauspiel, Cologne, Avignon Festival and Theater Treffen), Ten Billion (Royal Court, Avignon Festival); Rings of Saturn, Waves (Schauspiel, Cologne) and Hansel & Gretel, A Woman Killed with Kindness (National Theatre), De Meiden (Avignon Festival). Recent opera includes: Ariadne auf Naxos et Pelléas et Mélisande (Festival d’Aix-en-Provence); Lucia di Lammermoor (); (Festival d’Aix-en-Provence); The Way Back Home (ENO/Young Vic); Trauernacht and The House Taken Over (Festival d’Aix-en- Provence); Le Vin herbé (Staatsoper, Berlin); (Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and Royal Opera House); Al gran sole carico d’amore (Staatsoper, Berlin and Salzburg Festival); Orest (De Nederlandse Opera) and Clemency (Royal Opera House). Film and television includes: Untitled Short Film (Warp/ Film4); The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, Jenufa, Rough for Theatre 2 and The Turn of the Screw.

4 PARTICIPANT CLARA BAGET CONDUCTOR FRANCE

Clara Baget started music with cello, singing and piano. She graduated at St-Maur Conservatory with the distinction of the Lions Club Gala concert and scholarship. She studies conducting at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris with Alain Altinoglu. She had the opportunity to work with professional orchestras and choirs such as the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Orchestre de Picardie, the Spirito choir, the Orchestre de Normandie and receive through several masterclasses advice from Mikko Franck, Arie Van Beek, Nicole Corti, Jean Deroyer and Bertrand de Billy. Since 2019, she is the assistant conductor of Claire Gibault at the Paris Mozart Orchestra, and takes part to the educational program "Orchestre au bahut" conducting participative concerts and introducing classical music to young people. She conducted the Paris Mozart Orchestra in an original piece of the Italian composer Silvia Colasanti Ariane et le Minotaure, adapted from the opera Il Minotauro. She will soon conduct a creation of Fabio Vacchi, Beethoven l’Africain. She will be assisting Yann Molénat at the musical direction of the lyrical workshop of the Paris conservatory. With a special affection for voices, since she grew up in the middle of choirs, she will be part of the Young Women Opera Makers residency at the 2021 Festival d’Aix.

5 PARTICIPANT CHARLOTTE CORDEROY CONDUCTOR UNITED KINGDOM

Charlotte Corderoy is a UK-based conductor and recently graduated with a First Class degree in Music from the University of Oxford, where she was a senior organ scholar of Hertford College, principal conductor of the Oxford University Philharmonia Orchestra and musical director of the Oxford Contemporary Opera Society. She won the conducting scholarship of Schola Cantorum, the university’s premier chamber and has been appointed assistant conductor of the Oxford University Wind Orchestra. She has also been Vice-President of the Hertford College Music Society and Director of Chamber Music. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, she works with the Music Department at Charterhouse School in Surrey and currently studies orchestral conducting with Hilary Davan Wetton. In 2018, she is one of the 24 women to attend a specialised operatic conducting programme, pioneered by House’s Jette Parker Young Artists Programme, along with the National Opera Studio and the Royal Philharmonic Society. In 2019, she is one of six female conductors selected to progress in the Sorrell Women Conductors programme at the Royal Academy of Music. The same year, she conducted Handel’s Jephtha with the soloist James Gilchrist in the title role. She applies for the Principal Conductorship of the Oxford University Philharmonia and becomes the first student in Oxford’s history to hold this position and the conducting scholarship at Schola. Under her direction, the Philharmonia delivers three concerts in the Sheldonian Theatre, featuring Mendelssohn (Symphony No. 3), Borodin (Symphony No. 2), Dvořák (Symphony No. 8) and Sibelius’ Violin Concerto. She conducts the UK premiere of Gavin Bryars’ chamber opera Marilyn Forever. She makes her Oxford operatic debut as a vocalist in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, and as a mezzo soloist in David Lang’s Little Match Girl Passion.

6 PARTICIPANT ANA CUÉLLAR VELASCO STAGE DIRECTOR SPAIN

Ana Cuéllar Velasco studied singing, clarinet and had several roles in the opera world (chorister, singer, clarinettist in the orchestra, chorus director, stage manager and assistant). Then, she realised that stage direction of opera was the position in which she could best develop the cohesion between music and staging. She studied Musiktheater Regie at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin and developed her career through assistantships. She assisted Calixto Bieito in Paris, José Martret or Paco Azorín in Spain and Letizio Renzini in Berlin. As she believes in art as a generator of change within society, she stages to enhance issues that seem relevant today. She staged Purcell’s by focusing on the Queen of Cartago’s experience of betrayal and abandonment. She will work on Pergolesi’s La Serva padrona and will focus on the invisible work of women. In 2021, as a resident of the Young Women Opera Makers residency of the Festival d’Aix, she wants to work on Bizet’s Carmen.

7 PARTICIPANT LANQING DING COMPOSER CHINA

Lanqing Ding’s musical training begins with learning the keybord, classical dance and singing in a children’s choir at five years old. She studies composition with professor Huang Lv and in 2009, she follows professor Guohui Ye to continue her composition education at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. She attends classes with François Paris, Tristan Murail and works on electronic music with An Chengbi. From 2016-2017, she studies at the IRCAM Institute in Paris, under the guidance of Hèctor Parra. She completes an exchange project at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg where she works with Elmar Lampson. She is currently studying at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris with Stefano Gervanosi. Her works are performed at international festivals by ensembles such as the Shanghai Opera Symphony Orchestra, the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, the Meitar ensemble, the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and the Mise-en ensemble.

8 PARTICIPANT GIULIANA KIERSZ LIBRETTIST ARGENTINA

Giuliana Kiersz (1991, Buenos Aires) is a writer, playwright and artist. Her methods explore our relationship with language, reflecting within specific contexts to create fantasies that move the social and political horizon. She creates interventions through literature, performing and visual arts, practicing writing as a collective act to expand the political dimension of words. Her text El fin (The end) won first place in the X German Rozenmacher Prize; Isabel I received third prize in the National Theatre Institute’s 15th National Dramaturgy Competition; and B was awarded a Maison Antoine Vitez translation award. Her work has been supported by many international institutions including Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart), London’s Royal Court Theatre, the National Institute of Scenic Arts in Uruguay (INAE), the Ministry of Culture of Argentina, the International Literature Festival of Buenos Aires, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and Women Playwrights’ International Conference, among others. Her texts have been translated into English, German, French, Portuguese and Tsosil and published by Rara Avis Editorial, Libros del Rojas, Fondo Editorial ENSAD, Editorial INTeatro, Espejo Somos, Libros Drama and Edition Solitude / Archive Books. As part of her investigations she has organised writing gatherings in festivals, universities, theatres and art spaces such as Art University UNICEN (Tandil), Maison de l’Argentine (Paris), Zorrilla Museum (Montevideo) and Casa de la Paz Theatre (Mexico city). Her most recent works Someone asked who we are and we didn’t know what to answer, a poem-film about the processes of migration, and Sammeln collect coleccionar a sound installation reflecting on the learning of words/worlds, were exhibited in the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart in 2021.

9 PARTICIPANT JUTA PRANULYTĖ COMPOSER LITHUANIA

The Lithuanian composer Juta Pranulytė graduated choral singing school Liepaites in Vilnius, with specialisation in musicology and then studied composition at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Victorian College of the Arts from the University of Melbourne. She is currently studying at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz (Austria). Her work is selected for the Anthology of Lithuanian Art Music of the 21st Century released by the Music Information Centre Lithuania. Her music is performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Dunedin consort, the Red Note Ensemble, Les Métaboles choir as well as Vilnius Municipality Choir Jauna Muzika among others. She is also curating Kontaktas‘ Vilnius new and expetimental music series, the new music vocal ensemble Melos and running a school for music creation: Muzikalke.

10 PARTICIPANT CONSTANÇA SIMAS CONDUCTOR PORTUGAL

Constança Simas graduated in orchestral conducting from the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra in Lisbon, led by Jean-Marc Burfin. During her academic life, she works with conductors such as Jean-Sébastien Béreau, Scott Sandmeier, Emilio Pomarico, Robert Delcroix and Michalis Economou. She wins a Gulbenkian Foundation grant for her final year of Master and is currently studying Orchestral Conducing Master of Music at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, tutored by David Jones. She works with several amateur and professional orchestras in the United Kingdom, including the North Staffordshire Symphony Orchestra, the Ealing Symphony Orchestra and the Northampton Symphony Orchestra. In 2016, she is invited by Pedro Amaral to conduct the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra. In 2018 and 2019, she is selected as one of the seven finalists to conduct the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra and the Athens Philharmonia Orchestra in the International Conducting Masterclasses and Competitions. In 2022, she will be the assistant conductor to Alice Farnham for the WNO Youth production of Shostakovich’s operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki.

11 PARTICIPANT MATHILDE SOULHEBAN LIBRETTIST FRANCE

Mathilde Soulheban is a French author and playwright. She studied at the Aix University where she takes part to the writing workshops of Marion Aubert and Sonia Chiambretto. In 2017, she graduates from the École nationale supérieure des arts et techniques du theatre, where she studied with Enzo Cormann, Samuel Gallet and Koffi Kwahulé. During her academic life, she stages Brecht’s Man Equals Man. She also translates and stages The Alchemist from Ben Jonson. During two years, she leads writing and theatre workshops intended to asylum seekers and allophone refugees. She collaborates with Nicolas Barry in writing the interdisciplinary show Les Rapports des choses du vent et du souffle and Le Cri. In 2018, she joins the troupe En Devenir 2 as a playwright-assistant, both for The Walk (Robert Walser) and another creation based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In 2019, her work Têtes Brutes is selected by the Ateliers Medicis. Lately, her play Les Endettés has been recorded in a radiophonic version, with the Performing Arts students directed by Arnaud Maïsetti, and has been rewarded by the Collisions’ reading panel. She also writes novellas and works on the orality of her texts, which leads her to create her own theatre company in 2021.

12 PARTICIPANT JOSEPHINE STEPHENSON COMPOSER UNITED KINGDOM / FRANCE

Josephine Stephenson is a Franco-British composer, arranger and performer based in London. She studied composition with Giles Swayne and graduated from Clare College at Cambridge, before completing a Master in Composition at the London’s Royal College of Music under Kenneth Hesketh. In 2015-2016, she is part of the Britten Pears Young Artists Programme. She is a London Sinfonietta ‘Writing the Future’ composer for 2017-2019. Her music is commissioned by institutions such as the BBC, Radio France, Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, Spitalfields Music, Arcal Lyrique and Nonclassical, among others, and performers of her work include the London Sinfonietta, Aurora Orchestra, Sinfonia Viva, stargaze, Miroirs Étendus, 12 Ensemble, The Hermes Experiment, Explore Ensemble, SonoMania, the Van Kuijk Quartet, the Maîtrise de Radio France, tenor Allan Clayton and guitarist Laura Snowden. She enjoys collaborating with film and theatre makers (La Raffinerie, FellSwoop, L’Éventuel Hérisson Bleu) as well as songwriters and bands (Daughter, James Righton, Evergreen, NZCA LINES). In 2016, with the Berlin-based ensemble stargaze, she creates new arrangements for the BBC David Bowie Proms. She also contributes to their concerts with Lisa Hannigan in 2018. She sometimes assists Oscar-winning film composer Dario Marianelli. She is also, alongside composers Freya Waley-Cohen and William Marsey, artistic director of the London-based concert series and record label Listenpony, which puts on events mixing contemporary classical music with older classical music and popular genres.

13 PARTICIPANT KAPITOLINA TCVETKOVA STAGE DIRECTOR RUSSIA / FRANCE

Kapitolina Tcvetkova is a Russian-French stage director and artist. She graduated from Saint-Petersburg Academy of Music in 2014 and from a Master of Arts / Fine Arts in 2020 in the Haute École des Arts du Rhin. She works with puppet theatre, circus, events industry, animation, opera, as assistant choreographer for the Olympic Games ceremonies, as scriptwriter and director of few award-winning short movies, but also as assistant director and movement director at Mariinsky Theatre, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Zürich Opera House and at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe. Her recent work focuses on personal experimental artistic practice merging, denying, rethinking, accepting, criticising, reformulating experiences and skills from the past intertwined with new forms and problematics of fine arts practice (sculpture, installation, performance, video). She collaborates with different mediums to create multi-sensory and multidimensional installations and performances, in which space, object and body strive to coexist and interact on an equal right. She cooperates with specialists from different scientific and technical fields to create cross-disciplinary researches. No matter the form, she questions fragility, memory, matter as a living body, space as active matter and the changes of the operatic genre.

14 PARTICIPANT LOUISE VIGNAUD STAGE DIRECTOR FRANCE

Louise Vignaud is a French stage director. She graduated from the École Normale Supérieure d’Ulm and from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre. She works as directing assistant with Christian Schiaretti, Michel Raskine, Claudia Stavisky, Richard Brunel and Michael Delaunoy. During the 2015 Controverses at the Comédie de Valence, she presents her work on Bruit des os qui craquent (Suzanne Lebeau). Since 2017, she runs the Théâtre des Clochards Célèstes in Lyon, where she stages Florence Aubenas’ play Le Quai de Ouistreham. She is a member of the Théâtre national populaire (Villeurbanne) from 2018 to 2020, where she stages The Misanthrope (Molière) and Agatha (Duras). She works on Calderón (Pier Paolo Pasolini), The night before the forests (Bernard-Marie Koltès), Tigre fantôme (Romain Nicolas), Ladies’ tailor (Feydeau) and Vadim à la dérive (Adrien Cornaggia) with her own theatre company La Résolue. In 2018, she also stages Phèdre (Sénèque) at the Studio-Théâtre of the Comédie Française. In 2020, she starts to work on opera with the Co[opera]tive for whom she stages The White Lady from François-Adrien Boieildieu, conducted by Nicolas Simon.

15 PARTICIPANT AMANDA WILKIN LIBRETTIST UNITED KINGDOM

Amanda Wilkin is a playwright, actress and jazz-blues singer-songwriter from London. She is the winner of Soho Theatre’s Verity Bargate Award 2020 for her play Shedding a skin, which she will perform herself at Soho Theatre in summer 2021. In 2017, she is on the Royal Court and BBC London Writers’ Groups. After touring to 188 countries with Shakespeare’s Globe, she writes her first play And I dreamt I was drowning, which was developed as part of the Talawa Firsts Festival 2018. She writes and performs short pieces at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (London), The Little Sob as part of Dark Night of the Soul in early 2019, and Bessie Coleman, about the first African American female pilot as part of Notes to the Forgotten She-Wolves in early 2020. She is under commission to Audible as part of their Emerging Playwrights Programme 2020. She is recording an audio play called Recognition, which was co-created with Rachael Nanyonjo, about the 19th Century’s famous mixed race composer Samuel Coleridge- Taylor for 45North Ltd/Ellie Keel Productions, as well as a monologue called The Echo, which she will perform about the history of protest songs.

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PHOTO CREDITS Juta Pranulytė © Emilija Vinžanovaitė Louise Vignaud © Rémi Blasquez

Graphic design: Irma Boom Graphic execution: Laurie Wagner THE ACADÉMIE DU FESTIVAL IS SUPPORTED BY: SINCE ITS CREATION IN 1998, THE ACADÉMIE HAS ESTABLISHED ITSELF AS A CENTRE FOR VOCAL AND INSTRUMENTAL EXCELLENCE, A PLACE TO REFLECT ON OPERA CREATION TODAY AND TO EXPERIMENT WITH NEW INNOVATIVE FORMATS, WHILE ALSO SERVING AS A SPACE THAT PROMOTES AND AIDS THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF YOUNG ARTISTS.

AMMODO

Ammodo initiates, develops and supports projects in the visual arts, performing arts and sciences. Artists and scientists often see things before other people do. They identify social trends, extend boundaries and make revolutionary discoveries. By providing artists and scientists with the space and time to really immerse themselves in their work, and by helping to showcase that work, Ammodo seeks to stimulate the development of the arts and sciences. Ammodo supports the realisation of the new opera Innocence and the Opera de-ci de-la residency.

FONDATION D’ENTREPRISE TOTAL

TotalEnergies Foundation actively leads and participates in actions of solidarity throughout the world on a daily basis through its sites, its subsidiaries and its corporate foundation which stems from Total Group. With its solidarity program, Total is committed to contributing to the development of the zones where it is present. While focusing on youth, Total’s actions can be seen in four different areas including road safety, forest and climate action, education and the professional integration of young people, and dialogue around the subject of culture and heritage. Within the context of this fourth objective, TotalEnergies Foundation supports artistic projects that promote social inclusion, empower youth, and bring vitality to the regions where Total Group is present. The vocal residency of the Académie is a project that brings together all these objectives. TotalEnergies Foundation provides support to the Opéra de-ci de-là residency whose aim was to help young artists create participatory forms of opera. Sharing these newly elaborated and condensed forms of opera which were created during the residency adds a dynamic element to the daily life of the city. These operas were performed in public spaces and showcase heritage that can sometimes be overlooked, the everyday life of the residents of Aix.

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