Members of Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal will present Christopher Allen and Johnathan McCullough’s new concert titled “Emily.”

Allen and McCullough put together a theatrical production of Aaron Copland and Ricky Ian Gordon’s music set to poems by Emily Dickinson. Atelier lyrique’s sopranos Karoline Podolak, Lucie St-Martin, and Emma Fekete, mezzo-soprano Martina Myskohlid, and tenor Angelo Moretti take the stage as the audience steps into Emily’s writing room as she explores nature, life, death, and eternity leading up to her final hours.

On the creative process, Allen told OperaWire, “Emily was created as a way to re-contextualize some of the most important words written in poetry. When we began this journey of creating Emily, we felt that when we heard Dickinson’s text set by composers Aaron Copland and Ricky Ian Gordon, we intimately connected to the words in a special way. Once the melodies and harmonies supported the text, Emily became a real person. It was as if the text jumped off the page and into our hearts. This allowed us to further explore and ask the question who Emily was and where did these emotions or text pictures come from?”

This free concert will take place on April 5 at 7:30 pm a the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteu in Montréal.