European American Music Distributors Company is a member of the Schott Music Group

Kate Soper's Monodrama, IPSA DIXIT Shines in a New Production at Long Beach Opera

Jun. 28, 2024

Long Beach Opera presented Kate Soper's captivating "philosophy-opera" IPSA DIXIT on June 1, 8-9 at the Art Theatre in Long Beach, California. The new production, starring soprano Anna Schubert, was directed by James Darrah, and conducted by Christopher Rountree, who brought Soper's critically acclaimed opera, Romance of the Rose to life Long Beach Opera's audiences in February 2023. Long Beach Opera's production of IPSA DIXIT featured original choreography by Janet Eilber, artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, performed by the company's dancers. 

Kate Soper describes IPSA DIXIT, a Finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Music:

"What is art?  As the opening salvo to a piece of chamber music, the question is a little grandiose, bordering on pretentious.  And expecting to arrive at an answer may be as deluded as putting stock into Jenny Holzer’s enigmatic assertion that it is useful to incorporate language into art because ‘people can understand you when you say something.’  Nevertheless, these two phrases are the bookends of IPSA DIXIT, which attempts to sound the depths of the tangled relationship between art, language, and meaning.

IPSA DIXIT is the feminized form of ipse dixit (literally "he, himself, said it"), a term used to describe a fallacious claim based on the authority of the claimer alone – e.g., "I don't need to prove that what I say is true, it's true because I say so!"   The piece explores myriad ways in which the truth can be hidden, in how musical language can complicate sense, how a soprano’s sovereignty over instrumentalists can be challenged, and how gut feeling can overrule reason.  The pursuit of honesty, under everyday circumstances as well as in matters of life and death, relentlessly haunts Ipsa Dixit at its surface.

IPSA DIXIT is an evening-length work of chamber music theatre that explores the tantalizingly convoluted intersections of music, language, and meaning through a deep interweaving of music and text, complex instrumental textures, contemporary vocal techniques, and blistering ensemble virtuosity. Scored for voice, flute, violin, and percussion, and developed over several years of intense collaboration with the members of Wet Ink, IPSA DIXIT blends elements of monodrama, Greek theatre, and screwball comedy in its examination of the treachery of language and the questionable authenticity of musical expression. 

Ipse dixit /Ip-suh dik-sit/: noun (Latin). Literally "he, himself, said it."

An unproven yet dogmatic statement which the speaker expects the listener to accept as valid without proof beyond the speaker's assumed expertise.

Ipsa dixit: "she, herself, said it . . .”"


Kate Soper performs IPSA DIXIT, I. Poetics with members of the Wet Ink Ensemble

For more information on Kate Soper, please visit psnymusic.com.

Kate Soper
IPSA DIXIT (2010-2016)
for soprano, flute, violin, and percussion
90'
All movements of IPSA DIXIT may be performed alone or in any combination.

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