A powerful new opera by award-winning director Katie Mitchell, co-produced by Britten Pears Arts and The Royal Opera House.

The Blue Woman is an opera composed by Laura Bowler with librettist Laura Lomas. It is a though-provoking and poetic work, and sparks a conversation about how operas deal with violence against women, and our modern day understanding of this reality.

The Blue Woman excavates the interior landscape of one woman, who has experienced a post-traumatic shattering of self as a consequence of being raped. It follows her as she searches a nameless city looking for what was taken.

Wrapped around the central spine of the story are fragments of text, from other women of different ages, who have all been victims of sexual violence. Formally experimental, the structure of the opera mirrors the journey of fracture and reform that the Woman goes on.