Oge Nwosu
Oge Nwosu is a former barrister (BA, Law, Cambridge) and a librettist (MA, Opera Making & Writing, Guildhall School of Music & Drama) whose practice-led research focuses on extending the performative metaphor of dissociation in opera. Her chamber opera Occō’s Eternal Act, produced in association with the Royal Opera House, premiered at the Barbican and was commissioned by the V&A for a second, semi-staged performance as part of the Opera: Passion, Power and Politics Exhibition. She received further commissions from the National Opera Studio, and Wigmore Hall and her song Lily ist von ihrem Abenteuer zurückgekehrt was awarded the Tracey Chadwell Memorial Prize.
Presentations on her opera in development, Jack & Bella, with composer Dr Richard Baker, include: Jack & Bella: SmartVox Synchronisation and the Construction of Dissociation in the Opera Auditorium, Getting it Right? New Music / New Technologies Forum, Guildhall ResearchWorks / LSO Futures, Milton Court; Why Are They Singing? Dissonance, Dissociation and the Disruptive Librettist in the Opera Auditorium, Second International Conference on Women’s Work in Music, Bangor University; and An Operatic Intervention: Three Propositions and a Compositional Response, Collaboration in Theatre Symposium, TORCH. She has co-presented on PER/SON, her opera in development with composer Rhiannon Randle, at TaPRA: The Dysfunctional Word and the Mimetic Alien: Negotiating Emotional Estrangement and Artificial Intelligence on the Operatic Stage.
Her opera commission for the Royal Academy of Music, with composer Electra Perivolaris, will have its London premiere in June 2021. OCLW affiliation has fostered a developing ‘biography’ of this creative collaboration. She has given a Research Forum presentation, Why Opera? Writing the Future Life of a Paradoxical Art, and was a panel speaker on the Life-Writing Beyond Words: From the Stave to Sounds, Into Words podcast. Her single-page ‘score’, We Have Chosen Those Who Would Not Be Willing and Would Not Make it Fun, will appear in a Hausmusik Kollektiv volume, edited by Claudia Molitor, published by Uniformbooks in 2021, in support of Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival artists. Oge Nwosu’s work has been supported by ACE and Scottish Arts Council and she is a Fellow of Ucross Foundation, Wyoming.
