Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine

Experience the brilliance of soprano Julia Bullock in a work that shines a light on the life and legacy of Joséphine Baker

– artist, activist and icon of resistance who left the racially segregated United States in the 1920s and rose to unprecedented global celebrity in the music halls of Paris and beyond.

Directed by lauded opera director (and former Adelaide Festival Artistic Director) Peter Sellars, this genre-defying performance blends opera, jazz, spirituals and the elegance and raunch of early 20th century French music hall into a powerfully emotional song cycle, with spoken interludes by the poet Claudia Rankine.

Baker’s iconic songs are re-imagined by Tyshawn Sorey, the Pulitzer award-winning composer who fuses improvisational jazz and classical forms to create a work that reaches beyond the commercial limitations of Joséphine’s professional lifetime, inviting her to live again in the full scope of her historical and contemporary meaning, heartbreak and glory.

Julia Bullock’s performance reincarnates Joséphine Baker, inviting this extraordinary Black woman at last to claim and command the full range of her astonishing powers.