<img decoding="async" class="lazyload size-full-width wp-image-1598128" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/20250915_WP_HILDEGARD_SarahKirklandSnider__A9_0134_ElyseMertz_edit_16-Elyse-Mertz.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A live performance of Hildegard shows two vocalists and a chamber ensemble onstage, framed by a glowing digital projection of the operaâs title and imagery, capturing the workâs fusion of music, spirituality and contemporary visual design." width="970" height="647" data-caption='Nola Richardson, Mikaela Bennett and the contemporaneous ensemble of <em>HILDEGARD</em> by Sarah Kirkland. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Photo: Works & Process/Elyse Mertz</span>’>
Sometimes a headache is a good thing, and sometimes a migraine is a message from God. At least that’s what Hildegard of Bingen thought. Often called the Sybil of the Rhine, she was a mystic, visionary, writer, composer, philosopher and medical practitioner. Subject to visions, she was a 12th-century German Renaissance woman before such a thing existed.
“From my early childhood, before my bones, nerves, and veins were fully strengthened, I have always seen this vision in my soul, even to the present time,” she wrote toward the end of her life. “The light which I see thus is not spatial, but it is far, far brighter than a cloud which carries the sun. I can measure neither height, nor length, nor breadth in it; and I call it ‘the reflection of the living Light.’ And as the sun, the moon, and the stars appear in water, so writings, sermons, virtues, and certain human actions take form for me and gleam.”
Speculation varies on Hildegard’s affliction, some calling it divine manifestation, and the more scientifically inclined calling it epilepsy, autism or as neurologist Oliver Sacks opined in his 1970 book Migraine, “migraine with aura.” It’s what drew composer and fellow migraine sufferer Sarah Kirkland Snider to Hildegard.
“I wanted this to be an opera about what it means to be yourself when being yourself comes into conflict with socially conditioned notions of right and wrong,” Snider tells Observer about her first opera, HILDEGARD, which had its world premiere yesterday as part of LA Opera’s Off Grand series highlighting new works, running through November 9 at The Wallis in Beverly Hills. “I wanted to write an opera that was not only about Hildegard but about female relationships, collaborative, empowering relationships.”
One empowering relationship is that which Snider shares with visionary producer Beth Morrison, who strongly believed in the composer’s first opera effort after falling in love with her Penelope, a 2010 song cycle based on Homer’s Odyssey.
“I’m so proud of her,” Morrison says of Snider. “It’s been totally a labor of love. She loves Hildegard so much, the historical figure, and she’s written such a beautiful piece. And I can’t wait to share it with everybody.”
Snider’s music has been performed by the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Emerson String Quartet and soprano Renée Fleming in venues like Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center and the Sydney Opera House. Much of her work has centered around chamber ensemble compositions, orchestral and, lately, choral and sacred music like her 2020 album Mass for the Endangered. Despite her many accomplishments, opera remained a mountain yet unscaled.
“I’m actually not a big opera fan,” she confesses, which might explain why she’s taken so long to compose one. “It either seems overblown, and kind of blustery and ridiculous, or it seems not immersive or emotional enough. With a lot of modern operas, I have a hard time relating to the characters. So, I wanted to make things immersive and emotional and relatable.”
HILDEGARD director Elkhanah Pulitzer, who regularly collaborates with composer John Adams, recently helmed his Antony and Cleopatra at the Met. Her LA Opera productions include Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in 2014. For Hildegard, she envisions a blend of influences inspired by medieval religious paintings and iconography, as well as a minimalist take on Hildegard’s own artwork.
Leading a cast of nine, soprano Nola Richardson makes her LA Opera debut as Hildegard, accompanied by soprano Mikaela Bennett as Richardus. Veteran baritone David Adam Moore, seen earlier this year in Beth Morrison Productions’ Adoration, plays Hildegard’s superior, Abbot Cuno.
In her early fifties, Hildegard met and cared for Sister Richardus, an epileptic who endured the era’s best-known cure for her affliction—severe beatings meant to drive out malignant spirits. In return for Hildegard’s kindness, Richardus transcribed her visions for presentation to the pope. If they were not approved, Hildegard faced excommunication, making the opera’s principal conflict one of the individual versus an entrenched power structure. But there’s more—rape, disinterment, accidental suicide and a faceless angel, to name some.
Morrison introduced Snider to two librettists early in a process that began eight years ago. Librettos are commonly written by poets, who are adroit at saying a lot in a few words. Snider recalls hearing a frequent refrain: “You’ve got a lot of ideas here, you should really write this yourself.”
“I felt so much self-doubt,” she shudders. “But then when I started getting the music involved, that really helped shape the libretto. The challenge I had was only nine instruments to work with. For me, that’s a relatively small ensemble. And for a two-hour opera, I think the challenges were mostly just how to keep interest sustained, how to find peaks and valleys and keep this thing levitating all the way through.”
Morrison had concerns but stood behind Snider in her effort to write her own libretto, bringing in dramaturg Annie Jin Wang and the director Elkhanah Pulitzer to assist. “So, when she kind of settled into herself with it, and found her confidence, then she was able to really write this very, very beautiful narrative and language that is the libretto that we have today,” Morrison recalls.
It wasn’t just the libretto that pushed Snider to her limit. There were multiple workshops and meetings, eviscerating her words and music, a process she found “grueling and decimating.”
“Emotionally, I’m constantly getting torn down and having to build myself back up, my confidence and conviction,” she laments. “Arguing with a group about my ideas, that’s not easy. I’ve developed some battle scars.”
With that in mind, one might assume that HILDEGARD will be Snider’s first and last opera. But no, she says she can’t wait to do another. “Writing a two-and-a-half-hour opera gets you thinking on a bigger canvas, bigger storylines,” she offers. “I’m always trying to make musical connections and have motivic repetition, but it’s not easy to do that over the course of two and a half hours. I want music to tell the story and help orient the listener. For me, it’s a lot of referencing your own materials in ways that keep it fresh and changing, and use new harmonic color to shape the ever-evolving emotion of the characters. It’s something I haven’t done before on that scale.”
HILDEGARD will be presented as part of Beth Morrison Productions’ Prototype Festival in January, and at the Aspen Music Festival Summer 2026. Also coming early next year is Snider’s new orchestral album Forward Into Light, as well as an untitled new work for the New World Symphony and the Miami City Ballet premiering in April. After that, she will introduce Marmoris with the Monterey Symphony in May.
“I’m always trying to push in new directions with my music and try to lean into my fears, cause I feel like interesting things can happen there,” she says. “I have grown so much through this process. We have this idea that as we get older, we get entrenched, we calcify with our ideas and our ways of doing things. With this opera, it’s been the opposite for me. I’ve pulled all the cells out of my body and put in new ones. And I feel younger and more alive, creatively, than I ever have before. That has been really wonderful and really exciting.”
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