Sarah Van Sciver released striking new song ‘I Relinquish My Pen – Olympe – Live’
A vocal sextet is accompanied by a piano and strings in ‘Girondines’. Six actual feminist, intellectual, revolutionary, and creative French Revolution women are profiled in ‘Girondines’ through their interconnected stories. The radical murderer Charlotte Corday, the moderate feminist author Madame Manon Roland, and the radical feminist author Olympe de Gouges are all hanged. Political theorist Madame Germaine de Stal, prolific portrait painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, and creative chemist Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze are the three who survive political upheaval.
The pre-guillotine death aria of Olympe (sung by soprano Ashley Becker), who was executed for treason after proclaiming that all women were equal to men, can be heard on the song ‘I Relinquish My Pen’, which is featured in the album. The New York Times praised American soprano Ashley Becker for her “lovely, fully supported sound and thoughtful nuanced phrasing.”
Check out her new song here!
