Before she moved to London as a third-year undergraduate student less than a decade ago, Na’ama Zisser had never even been to the opera. This week sees the production of her very own, “Mamzer Bastard,” by London’s Royal Opera House at the Hackney Empire. Taking place within an orthodox Hasidic community and featuring Jewish cantorial singing, “Mamzer” is the second fruit to be born from the ROH and Guildhall School of Music and Drama’s joint-doctoral program, after Philip Venables’s celebrated “4.48 Psychosis.” It’s a heavy precedent which Zisser admits initially “freaked me out,” though ultimately “in a good way—it put pressure on me to work harder.”
Uncanny Songs
An interview with Na’ama Zisser
