“Hildegard had a unique way of seeing the world, and that is where my connection with her begins.”
For composer, director and librettist Nwando Ebizie, the starting point for a new opera is an encounter across almost nine centuries: one artist recognising something in another woman’s extraordinary perception.
The woman is Hildegard von Bingen, the 12th-century Benedictine abbess whose work encompassed music, writing, visions and illuminated manuscripts. The opera is Ecstasy of the Virtues, Ebizie’s reimagining of Hildegard’s mystery play Ordo Virtutum.
Produced by Mahogany Opera, it arrives at Leeds’ Howard Assembly Room on Saturday 3 October, with afternoon and evening performances, before travelling to Barrow Town Hall on 7 October.
Ebizie grew up in Oldham and now lives on the Yorkshire–Lancashire border. Her work moves between experimental theatre, music, neuroscience and African diasporic ritual. In this production, those interests gather around a question that extends beyond the stage: what becomes possible when different ways of experiencing the world are given creative authority?
Ebizie’s interest in Hildegard is shaped by her own experience of visual snow syndrome. The production’s account of her condition describes visual phenomena including starbursts, halos and pointillist-like noise.
That experience inspired her exploration of Hildegard’s visions. It offers a personal point of connection with the medieval artist, without requiring their experiences to be treated as identical.
“With Ecstasy of the Virtues, I want to open a doorway into that alternate reality: a liminal space where the Soul meets her shadow self, where the pain of being human is transformed into the beauty of being human,” Ebizie says.
“My desire is always to create numinous experiences so that people leave a little bit transformed, tumbling down the rabbit hole, where things are not what they once seemed.”
Her opera takes Hildegard’s allegorical figures and gives them contemporary forms. The Devil becomes Self-Loathing, opening a different way to explore the Soul’s struggle and the forces that can shape an inner life.
Among the Virtues are Hope, Groundedness, Self Protection and Belief in Humanity. These names bring the work’s spiritual inheritance into contact with recognisable human needs: finding stability, protecting ourselves, retaining hope and learning how to live with other people.
The production asks what happens when feared or rejected parts of ourselves are brought into the light.
The musical palette reaches widely.
Hildegard’s flowing vocal lines provide a point of departure for a score that draws on electronic sound, acoustic instruments and field recordings. Technical director Tom Richards has built custom synthesisers and a mini-Oramics machine for the work.
Recordings made in hammams, along the rivers at Snape Maltings and on the Cornish coast enter a soundworld that also includes trombone, cello, Celtic harp and frame drums.
The influences described by the creative team range from Bulgarian choral textures and New York minimalism to music from across the African continent. West African and Caribbean ceremonial traditions, medieval mystery plays and Toni Morrison’s Beloved also inform the work.
These are the materials from which Ebizie is constructing an encounter with Hildegard, bringing historical music into the orbit of her own artistic practice.
The 12-strong cast includes Deaf performance artist Chisato Minamimura, composer and vocalist Laura Bowler, Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian, Grace Nyandoro, Sara Amini and Yfat Soul Zisso. Amini performs as the Soul/Hildegard, while Minamimura and Nyandoro share the figure of Self-Loathing.
Together, the performers bring singing, movement and theatrical British Sign Language into the telling.
One of the production’s most significant commitments concerns how audiences encounter it.
Theatrical BSL, creative captions and a relaxed approach have been embedded in the work’s development. Access has helped shape the production’s form.
That makes this an especially interesting proposition for a venue such as the Howard Assembly Room, where audiences encounter work across musical traditions and performance disciplines. The question of who can participate becomes part of the artistic thinking: how a story is communicated, how sound is experienced and how people inhabit the room.
A multisensory production also raises useful questions about choice and comfort. Clear information about the experience matters, allowing audiences to decide what works for them and to plan their visit.
The wider cultural significance lies in the production’s starting point. A disabled-led creative team is making an ambitious new work in which different forms of perception and communication influence its language.
For organisations seeking to widen participation, there is much to consider in that relationship between artistic invention and access.
Ecstasy of the Virtues is one chapter in Ebizie’s longer Hildegard: Visions project, which has expanded into an apothecary garden, experiments with mycelium construction and experimental gastronomy, alongside music and theatre.
Mahogany Opera has supported its development since 2020. That history includes a co-produced installation at East Street Arts in Leeds in 2021, a full commission in 2022 and a research and development residency with Britten Pears Arts in 2023.
The Leeds performances therefore bring the work back to a city that has already played a part in its evolution.
Its next Northern stop is Barrow, presented in partnership with experimental music organisation Full of Noises as part of Barrow Music Week. Across those settings, audiences will encounter a work whose ambitions extend through music, ritual, movement and the possibilities of shared sensory experience.
At its centre remains Ebizie’s recognition of Hildegard: a woman whose distinctive way of seeing found expression in art that survived her.
Now, another artist is asking what that inheritance might open up - and inviting an audience into the world she has made.
Ecstasy of the Virtues is commissioned and produced by Mahogany Opera. It comes to the Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, in partnership with Opera North, on Saturday 3 October 2026, followed by Barrow Town Hall on Wednesday 7 October in partnership with Full of Noises.
Leeds tickets HERE
Barrow tickets HERE
Header image: Ecstasy of the Virtues. Photography by Claire Shovelton
