Hildegard

Set in 1147, HILDEGARD follows German Benedictine abbess/polymath/composer St. Hildegard von Bingen as she receives visions from God. At grave risk of excommunication, she sets out to document her visions, enlisting her fellow nun Richardis von Stade to illustrate the manuscript. As they develop a transformative partnership that awakens them in ways both profound and unexpected, the two women must confront the powers that would see them erased from history rather than making it. More broadly, HILDEGARD is about the desire for connection—to divinity, to humanity and to our deepest sense of self—and the conflicts that compete therein.

Hildegard was comissioned by Beth Morrison Projects. Comissioned in part by Aspen Music Festival. The work premiered in November 2025 at the Wallis Theatre Center in a co-production between Beth Morrison Projects, the Wallis, and LA Opera. It will be presented again in Jauary 2026 at the PROTOTYPE Festival.

Sound design for opera is notoriously complex and Hildegard was no exception to this standard. As the piece is set at an abbey in the Rhineland in the 1100s, a lot of my work as designer was placing the various scenes in their respective spaces. In addition to a standard cast and band mic’ing arrangement, I ran an Ableton Live session with a variety of preset patches running various high-quality convolution reverb presets to specifically place scenes around the various rooms of the monastery. With significant musical references to Gregorian chant and Hildegard’s own compositions, placing scenes in their appropriate sonic location (i.e. a reverberant cathedral-like space for chants, shorter wooden or stone rooms for office or bedroom scenes, etc.) was very important to the larger vision of the work. Additionally, I was able to employ the Wallis theatre’s built in surround system to create reverberant effects that sustained in the room and swirled around the space for some of the more surreal moments connected with Hildegard’s visions.

Sarah Kirkland Snider Composer and Librettist
Gabriel CrouchMusic Director
Elkhanah PulitzerDirector
Beth MorrisonCreative Producer
Drew Sensue-WeinsteinSound Designer
Deborah JohnsonArtwork and Projections Designer

Marsha Ginsberg
Scenic Designer
Molly IrelanCostume Designer

Pablo SantiagoLighting Designer

Annie Jin WangDramaturg

Laurel JenkinsMovement and Choreography
*Production photos by Angel Origgi

Press

“[Sarah Kirkland Snider] has accomplished a marvel of abundant grace, a work of unforced, almost overwhelming resonance.”
- Joshua Barone, the New York Times

“A rapture... its characters and music so easily traverse a millennium’s distance that the High Middle Ages might be the daay before yesterday.”
- Mark Swed, the LA Times

“Hildegard is Snider’s first opera, and unlike many other recent newcomers to the genre, she’s a natural... The goal of her game, as before, is to make luminous lines and tangles of gorgeous vocal sound...”
- Richard S. Ginell, Classical Voice North America