Julia Holter performing 'Tragedy' as an opera in NYC

Back in 2011, Julia Holter released the album Tragedy, an album that was inspired by the Greek play Hippolytus. Now, Julia is planning to present Tragedy as its own play. To create the new work, she teamed up with Yelena Zhelezov and Zoe Aja Moore, both of whom she previously collaborated with for music videos (including the “Goddess Eyes II” video, a re-working of a Tragedy song that appeared on that album’s followup, Ekstasis).

The Tragedy Opera will be performed at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust on June 22 and 23 with new arrangements of the Tragedy material being performed by Julia, Yelena, Zoe, and the Wild Up ensemble (who Julia has performed with before). Here’s more:

Tragedy will encounter and play with themes that resonate with both the classic text and our contemporary moment: the complexities of shame, loss of empathy, and our inability to see ourselves and one another clearly. The mise-en-scene of the opera will draw upon the visual elements that originally inspired the music—shadows, reflections, echoes, fragments, statues—and will layer vocal performers, multiple channels of video (both live and sourced content), and performing objects to create a haunting emotional landscape.

Tickets for June 22 and June 23 are on sale now.

Those performances won’t be the only time that Julia Holter appears at National Sawdust in June. She’s headlining the Creative Independent Northside Showcase on June 10 at that same venue, with a solo set. That show also includes Georgia, and a conversation between Tunisian protest singer Emel Mathlouthli and Downtown Boys singer Victoria Ruiz with writer Amy Rose Spiegel (tickets).

Last month, Julia released the live album, In The Same Room. You can stream the whole thing below, along with the “Goddess Eyes II” video.