As part of her Forecast project, she researched female opera protagonists who shed their victimhood and become perpetrators. Her proposal tackles Robert Schumann‘s song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben: In eight songs based on poems by Albert Chamisso, Schumann draws a picture of a devoted and loyal nineteenth-century woman who dedicates her life to a man, only to disappear in his shadow.
Obermayer plans a performative project that deconstructs the cycle by stretching its twenty-four-minutes’ duration to an eight-hour performance. The cast becomes a choir that simultaneously resists and complies with the themes of female love and life and reflects on female emotional labor, which is often unpaid.
