Jacqueline

Fresh off a hugely successful run at West Edge Opera in San Francisco, Jacqueline is an unmissable show and a powerful display of virtuosity.

Jacqueline explores the meteoric rise and tragic fall of Jacqueline du Pré through her relationship with her cello. Who is the much-admired Jacqueline when the one thing that most defines her is taken away by multiple sclerosis?

Brought to life by two contemporary virtuosi, celebrated soprano Marnie Breckenridge plays Jacqueline, and former du Pré protégé and world-renowned cellist Matt Haimovitz plays her constant companion, her cello.

Jacqueline received five Dora Mavor Moore nominations in 2020, including Outstanding New Opera, Outstanding Production, Outstanding Achievement in Design, and Outstanding Performance by an Individual (x2), and won the award for Outstanding Performance by an Individual for Marnie Breckenridge.

Inspired by the structure and emotional landscape of Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, composer Luna Pearl Woolf and Pulitzer Prize-winning librettist Royce Vavrek chart the development of a great prodigy and, ultimately, a great tragedy. Jacqueline references Haimovitz’s recollections of du Pré, having spent time as a young prodigy under her wing. Colourful and at times fractured, the form of the work echoes du Pré’s iconic interpretation of the Elgar, using the concerto’s four-movement structure to navigate a prismatic and passionate, if all too short, life in music.

ABOUT JACQUELINE du Pré:

Jacqueline du Pré was born in Oxford in 1945. She received her first cello at age five, and by age 11, she earned an acclaimed scholarship, which exposed her to some of the most outstanding music teachers available. Her life revolved around the cello, and she was one of a rare group of musicians who had flawless technique and an innate understanding of the passion within music. At 15, she was the youngest person ever to be awarded the Queen’s Prize, and by age 18, she was already a soloist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

In 1965, du Pré made her “definitive” recording of the Elgar concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra, which was widely considered so perfect that other renowned cellists stopped playing it. In 1968, she began experiencing numbness in her fingers, which her doctor misdiagnosed as stress. Four years later, at 28 years old, she was finally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and the numbness in her fingers had become so extreme she could no longer play. Jacqueline du Pré finally succumbed to her disease in 1987 at the age of 42.