World Premiere Performance: Alex Lubet, Amy Levy: Songs of Love and Loss, for mountain dulcimer and mezzo-soprano

Amy Levy was a 19th century Anglo-Jewish lesbian poet, novelist, and essayist, much admired in her lifetime by Oscar Wilde and many others. The second Jewish woman at Cambridge University and the first at Newnham College, Cambridge—where she experienced considerable sexism and antisemitism– Levy’s literary output explored the early feminist ideal of the “New Woman,” insisting on greater independence for women and the removal of behavioral constraints. While there has been a resurgence of interest in her work since the 1990s, owing largely to feminist scholars, Lubet’s composition is the first professional musical setting of her poetry.