INTERNATIONAL OPERA THEATER
Opera as a vehicle for empathy, inclusion, and justice — stories from IOT's stage and rehearsal room that reach beyond the theater.
Inclusion On and Off Stage
For IOT's 15th world premiere — a new staging of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, presented for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death — other-abled youth from Città della Pieve designed the costumes and sets, working from the town's ceramic laboratory. As far as IOT is aware, it was the first time in history that other-abled youth had designed costumes and sets for a world premiere opera.
That same spirit shaped Karen Saillant's work in Acquaiola, Italy, where she wrote and staged an original piece of theater with seven autistic young people, building each character around the actor's own natural movements and behaviors rather than asking them to fit a predetermined role. The result, she has said, was one of the most authentic and moving theatrical experiences of her career — and a lasting change in how the actors related to family and friends after the performance.
Justice & Redemption
Can the unconditional love of an abused child redeem the soul of a heartless criminal? Jago, IOT's sequel to Verdi's Otello, received its American premiere in 2013 at the Media Theatre near Philadelphia, marking the 200th anniversary of Verdi's birth. Based on an original story by Karen Saillant, with music by Italian composer Carlo Pedini, the opera picks up twenty years after Shakespeare's Othello, weaving reimagined musical flashbacks from Verdi's score into a new story of cruelty and grace.
Inspired by the documentary Inside Buffalo, this IOT opera tells the little-known story of the segregated 92nd Infantry Division, who fought with unyielding valor in World War II. Premiering in Città della Pieve and touring to Rome's Teatro Valle, the production was paired with more than 25 educational events in Philadelphia, including a concert and lecture at The National Constitution Center with the Italian Consulate, The African American Museum of Philadelphia, and 92nd Division veterans.
The Science of Empathy
When Karen Saillant begins work with a new cast, she raises her right arm and asks the singers to "do what I do." In more than 50 years of working with artists from over 50 cultures, nearly everyone mirrors her by raising their own right arm — but the rare few who instinctively raise their left arm, truly mirroring rather than imitating, tend to become the standout communicators of emotion in her productions.
That instinct connects to the 1990s discovery of mirror neurons by scientists in Parma, Italy, studying macaque monkeys — a finding Saillant sees as central to understanding empathy in performance, and to what she calls a New Renaissance in operatic art.
legacy
IOT's 14th world premiere, celebrating the childhood of Hildegard von Bingen, was dedicated to the memory of Harold Parker — Karen Saillant's first singing teacher at The Settlement Music School, whose belief in singing free of excessive tension shaped the philosophy that would later become The Saillant System.
When Mi-Kyoung Lee's costumes and sets arrived in Città della Pieve for the 2006 premiere of La Tempesta, townspeople came early and sat in silence for hours, taking in a piece of art that stretched the length of the theater — some seeing hurricanes, others webs, others suns. Karen Saillant later wrote about the moment for Surface Design Journal, calling it proof of quiet art's power to still and stir a room at once.