Co-commissioned by Beth Morrison Projects and the Aspen Music Festival and School, HILDEGARD is a work of operatic historical fiction about twelfth-century German Benedictine abbess/polymath St. Hildegard von Bingen. Set in 1147, the opera follows Hildegard as she receives visions from God. While transcribing these visions for Papal evaluation – a process that will decide her prophet or heretic – she enlists the young convalescent Richardis von Stade to illustrate the manuscript. As they develop a transformative collaboration that awakens them in ways both profound and unexpected, the two women must confront the powers that would see them erased from history rather than authoring it. At the same time, Hildegard is haunted by mysterious visions she cannot explain, forcing her to grapple with unacknowledged truths she can no longer deny.

Inspired by historical events and the writings of Hildegard von Bingen, HILDEGARD is a meditation on the desire for connection – to spirituality, to humanity, and to our most authentic sense of self – and the conflicts that can compete therein.

For eight years, Snider extensively researched Hildegard's life and work, as well as Benedictine monastic culture and the broader socio-political history of Hildegard’s time. Snider also visited Eibingen Abbey and the ruins of Disibodenberg Monastery, and consulted with renowned Hildegard scholar Barbara Newman. Snider chose to write the libretto herself so that she could develop the text and music simultaneously, and because she had a clear idea of how she wanted to tell Hildegard’s story.

Snider says, “I have chronic migraine, and first learned about Hildegard von Bingen through reading Oliver Sacks’s book Migraine, in which Sacks popularized a theory suggesting that Hildegard’s visions were a result of migraine. I immediately wanted to know more. Thus began a twenty-five-year fascination with Hildegard – her music, visions, and astonishing story. I was awestruck by her triumph over self-doubt, illness, and the otherwise impenetrable social barriers of her time to become the first woman in the history of the Catholic Church to speak and write in the name of God. I wanted to share this story while exploring aspects of her philosophy and the more mysterious realm of her visions, and I thought it would be interesting to do this through the prism of her relationship with fellow nun Richardis von Stade, with whom she shared an impassioned yet complicated love. Opera is an art form that excites me most when it deals with complex, layered emotions. I wanted to explore not only the struggle for intellectual and artistic expression in an oppressive environment, but also what happens when the human desire for connection comes into conflict with socially conditioned notions of right and wrong. Hildegard overcame extraordinary obstacles to lead a self-directed, creatively expansive life. I hope that my treatment of her story will resonate with anyone who has chafed against power structures or societal norms in pursuit of living their authentic truth.”