For This Opera Director, a Lot Is Riding on a ‘Handmaid’s Tale’

She noticed her first opera at 10 years previous, when her father carried out in an novice manufacturing of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” in a church corridor. It was a distinctly lo-fi manufacturing: Her father’s costume for the position of Papageno was “a flat cap and a few pan pipes on a string round his neck,” Miskimmon mentioned.

But Miskimmon quickly fell exhausting for the artwork kind. As a lot as opera was an escape from the violence of the Troubles, a part of its attraction was that it additionally someway mirrored them, she mentioned: On the time, Northern Eire was a spot the place individuals didn’t really feel they’d a lot management over their future, since they may “exit for an bizarre day’s work, and be blown up.” In opera, Miskimmon mentioned, “the characters are relentlessly pushed towards heaven and hell,” with out a lot company, both. It felt “a way more sincere, inventive illustration of life.”

At Cambridge College, the place she studied English literature, Miskimmon directed some scholar productions. However she by no means thought she would turn into knowledgeable director, she mentioned, till she was invited to help the British director Graham Vick at Glyndebourne. After engaged on seven productions there, she landed a job because the inventive director of the Opera Theater Firm, Eire’s nationwide touring opera, earlier than ultimately transferring to the Danish Nationwide Opera in Aarhus, and, later, the Norwegian Opera and Ballet in Oslo.

Andrew Mellor, an opera journalist who specializes within the Nordic international locations, mentioned that Miskimmon was profitable in Denmark, with a number of progressive productions that turned speaking factors. Her tackle Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte” in Aarhus supplied audiences two productions — one conventional, one up to date — and started every evening with a vote to resolve which might be staged. Equally attention-grabbing was an opera Miskimmon commissioned there referred to as “Brothers,” about Danish troopers coping with post-traumatic stress after combating in Afghanistan.

Her time at Oslo was extra “turbulent,” Mellor mentioned. The Norwegian firm’s music director, Karl-Heinz Steffens, left earlier than Miskimmon even began, and he or she “had a combat with its ensemble system” when she wished to make use of extra visitor singers, Mellor mentioned. Amid the battle, Miskimmon staged a number of acclaimed productions, together with certainly one of Britten’s “Billy Budd” that featured an enormous submarine onstage.

“She’s no shrinking violet, and when she has an thought she pursues it,” Mellor mentioned.

Miskimmon mentioned her “recollections of working in Oslo should not ones of turbulence,” and added that, in her opinion, it had been “a really optimistic working expertise.”