A new chamber opera ’Southern Crossings’ by Zaid Jabri (music), Yvette Christianse & Rosalind Morris (Concept & libretto) on 16 and 18 June in New York.

In the century of discovery, of empire and emancipation, six characters confront each other with their fears and doubts about what science demands, and what it may cost them and those whose world it is about to transform.

Framed by the opening aria sung by a former slave named January, Southern Crossings is a chamber opera that takes audiences back in time, to 1838, when the famed astronomer, John Herschel and his wife, Margaret, are about to return to England from Cape Town where, two years earlier (1836), they had hosted Charles Darwin on his return voyage on the Beagle. Darwin took inspiration from Herschel to tackle ‘the mystery of mysteries’; Herschel hoped Darwin would join his crusade for abolition. Nonetheless, the dinner was not a great success. While packing with January and Leah, whom the Herschels have manumitted and who now await their freedom in a period of mandatory apprenticeship, Margaret recalls the dinner in the dream-image of what might have been. As she does so, January and Leah have their own conversation about what they overheard that evening (tales of people abducted from Tierra del Fuego and animals they have never seen), and what they desire for a future after bondage.