
THE SEEN & THE UNSEEN : HILMA & THE RED THREAD
Hilma | World Premiere
The Red Thread | Work-in-Development
A National Sawdust production in collaboration with Yale School of Music and Yale School of Drama, presented as part of the PROTOTYPE Festival.
PROGRAM STRUCTURE
PART I: THE RED THREAD
Work-in-Development Presentation
Music by Wang Lu
Libretto by Deborah Brevoort
The Red Thread, presented as a 30-minute piano-only work-in-development, follows an adopted Chinese-American woman who travels to rural China searching for the birth mother who left her in a market basket eighteen years earlier, a red thread tied around her ankle. Spare, intimate, and rooted in Chinese mythology, it asks what binds us across lifetimes.
PART II: HILMA
Fully Staged Chamber Opera | WORLD PREMIERE
Music & Libretto by Daniel Zlatkin
Hilma: Catherine Martin, mezzo-soprano
Directed by Juliana Morales Carreño
Following an intermission, Hilma is presented as a fully staged production of approximately 45 minutes. The opera is a portrait of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, who channeled abstract visions from unseen spirits decades before the art world was ready to receive them. Haunting and luminous, the production brings Hilma’s visionary canvases to life through light, projection, and movement, performed by the National Sawdust Ensemble under the musical direction of Jeffrey Zeigler.
RUN TIME: 90 MINUTES, WITH INTERMISSION
Conducted by Anthony Cheung (Red Thread) and Raquel Acevedo Klein (Hilma)
National Sawdust Ensemble, Jeffrey Zeigler – Music Director
Music Direction by Jeffrey Zeigler
CREATIVE TEAM
WANG LU
COMPOSER & PIANIST
DANIEL ZLATKIN
COMPOSER & LIBRETTIST
ANTHONY CHEUNG
COMPOSER & PIANIST
Juliana Morales Carreño
DIRECTOR
DEBORAH BREVOORT
PLAYWRIGHT & LIBRETTIST
Catherine Martin
MEZZO-SOPRANO





