Explore More

Ecstasy of the Virtues is a new opera by composer, director, librettist and multidisciplinary artist Nwando Ebizie, produced by Mahogany Opera.

The opera is viewed from Nwando's perspective as a Neurodivergent Afrofuturist, and draws on her experience of visual snow syndrome, a neurological condition that causes her to experience an array of visual phenomena including starbursts, pointilist-like visual noise, auras and halos. This inspired her to explore Hildegard's visions.

Ecstasy of the Virtues will be a 90-minute performance inspired by Hildegard’s morality, mystery play Ordo Virtutum, with singing & live instruments, dance, multisensory ritual and projections, and featuring 12 performers including Deaf performance artist Chisato Minamimura, composer and vocalist Laura Bowler, Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian, Grace Nyandoro, Sara Amini, and Yfat Soul Zisso.

Rooted in creative accessibility, Theatrical British Sign Language, creative captions, and a 'relaxed' feel are all embedded into the piece rather than added on.

The world premiere will take place at Stone Nest, London on 25 September 2026, with further performances on 26 and 27 September, followed by Howard Assembly Room, Leeds in partnership with Opera North (3 October), and Barrow Town Hall (in partnership with Full of Noises as part of Barrow Music Week) (7 October).

Ecstasy of the Virtues takes Hildegard's cast of allegorical Virtues and places them in 21st-century guises. Nwando reframes The Devil, for example, as Self Loathing, rejecting the typical historical portrayal of The Devil through a Christian lens, which absorbed indigenous gods such as horned nature spirits, tricksters and chaos spirits and flattened them into a single, simplified idea of evil. This character of Self Loathing draws on the idea that what is forced into shadow ends up ruling you, leading the opera to ask what it means to bring those exiled forces into the light.

The musical language moves outward from Hildegard's modal melismatic lines into a unique soundworld that leads from a medieval chapel to a downtown minimalist New York loft. Nwando has built an electronic score around a mini-Oramics machine and custom synthesisers built by technical director Tom Richards, field recordings made in hammams, on the rivers at Snape Maltings and on the Cornish coast, and western classical instruments including trombone and cello. Celtic harp and frame drums complete a musical palette that moves at turns through Bulgarian choral textures, minimalist passages, and folk music from across the African continent.

Ecstasy of the Virtues is one chapter in Ebizie's long-term Hildegard: Visions project, which has grown to encompass an apothecary garden, mycelium construction experiments, and experimental gastronomy alongside musical and theatrical work. Mahogany Opera has supported the project since 2020, through our Various Stages Festival, a co-produced installation at East Street Arts (2021), a full commission (2022), an R&D residency with Britten Pears Arts (2023), and a presentation of the installation Extreme Unction Vol. 2 at Artsadmin's festival of art, climate and community (2023).

Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) was a Benedictine abbess, composer, visual artist, writer and mystic: not only a visionary, but also, uniquely for the time, a woman whose visions were recorded and preserved in musical scores, writings and illuminated manuscripts.

Speaking about Ecstasy of the Virtues, Nwando Ebizie says, "Hildegard had a unique way of seeing the world, and that is where my connection with her begins. With Ecstasy of the Virtues, I want to open a doorway into that alternate reality: a liminal space where the Soul meets her shadow self, where the pain of being human is transformed into the beauty of being human. My desire is always to create numinous experiences so that people leave a little bit transformed, tumbling down the rabbit hole, where things are not what they once seemed."

Bridget Rennie, Executive Producer & Executive Director of Mahogany Opera says, “We’re thrilled to be bringing this extraordinary piece to the stage, having supported its development and diverse iterations since 2020. This production, which unveils the singular artistry of a 12th century abbess through the revelatory perspective of Nwando’s neurodivergent Afrofuturist lens, chimes beautifully with Mahogany's philosophy of taking inspiration from the past to create distinctive and inclusive new encounters with opera today. An exceptional cast and creative team are creating something truly special which we can’t wait to share with audiences in London, Leeds and Barrow.”

For further press information, please contact:
Olivia Brown, Stay Tuned
Email: olivia@staytunedcomms.com | Tel: +44 (0)7716644717 | web: https://staytunedcomms.com/