Woman
Salt I
of
A WORLD PREMIERE OPERA
BY A NOVICE EUGENE COMPOSER
EXAMINES OUR CAPACITY TO HEAL
by Rachael Carnes
ANICE THIGPEN
10
PHOTO BY TODD COOPER
June 15, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
t was at Anice Thigpen’s lowest
emotional point that the protagonist
in her new opera The Woman of Salt
came to her.
“I was walking in the woods. And
she took the wind out of the firs and
made that the voice for the first
song,” she says.
The Woman of Salt — Thigpen’s
first opera — was born from deep
trauma.
“I was there, in the childhoods of my children —
flooded — and I turned around, and there, floating
in space, is an oversized, feminine figure,” Thigpen
says. “I recognized her as Lot’s wife. She telepathed
to me, ‘Look back!’”
But before she could write the opera, which
premieres June 23 at Springfield’s Wildish Theater,
a part of Thigpen had to die.