Empowered Women Trilogy: Unsung Heroine

The Secret Life and Love of Troubadour Countess Beatrix De Dia

Blurring the boundaries of what a concert is, The Telling bring you three intimate “concert-theatre” pieces to mark International Women’s Day 2019, transporting you back in time through plaintive ballads, lively dance music and dramatic narrative. The Empowered Women Trilogy celebrates the lives of three extraordinary women who defy the strictures of their time and whose stories are both of their time but also startlingly contemporary.

Unsung Heroine is the imagined history of troubadour Countess Beatriz de Dia (1140-1212). A blending of history and fiction, this intimate concert/play takes you back to the heady atmosphere of 12th century Provence with plaintive songs and foot-stomping medieval dances.

Jan Chappell plays the redoubtable Beatriz, a feisty woman troubadour, trapped in a loveless marriage.  She meets fellow troubadour Raimbaut d’Aurenga and they embark on a passionate affair. But Beatriz has enemies at court and as summer moves to autumn and events spiral inevitably towards their conclusion, Beatriz channels her feelings into her song A Chantar, the only troubadour song by a woman, where both poetry and melody survived in notated form.

‘Beautifully borne’ Sean Rafferty, BBC Radio 3

See also:

Empowered Women Trilogy: Talk by Fiona Maddocks about Hildegard Von Bingen

Empowered Women Trilogy: The Vision – The Imagined Testimony of Hildegard von Bingen

Empowered Women Trilogy: Into the Melting Pot – the Lives and Soundtrack of Christian, Jewish and Arabic Women in Medieval Spain