When I Awoke

When I Awoke was a short, one-woman chamber opera, set in real-time over the course of an hour. It told the story of a woman, born in the far-north of Queensland Australia, who forsakes the vast emptiness and stultification of her rural home and flees to London, ultimately cultivating a successful life and career as a surgeon. Now 35 years old, her dangerous morphine addiction robs her of her career and her marriage, and she finds herself stranded in the ruins of a life built on ambition and relentless movement. With nowhere left to turn, she is suddenly contacted by her estranged sister in Australia, with a one-way ticket home and the promise of reconciliation. With only an hour to decide whether to board the flight departing Heathrow that night, the Woman reflects on the choices that have brought her to this crossroad, and ponders whether a home is something she has always had waiting, or something that she has irrevocably lost.
 

Rich and evocative, yet stylistically sparse, When I Awoke used music to sculpt an inner world of great depth and resonance, while contemplating the nature of home, itinerancy and the unshakeable tethers that bind us to our roots.