SWORD SONGS
Sword Songs is a 44-minute song cycle forming the first musical material from the opera Kiss My Sword. It was premiered in 2025, and has since received multiple performances. Sword Songs has been recorded for an upcoming album release with UK label Toccata Classics in 2027, featuring Jessica Aszodi (mezzo-soprano), Rachael Joyce (soprano) and Coady Green (piano).
In Sword Songs, two singers delve into moments of Julie’s life - sword fights, love affairs and performances. The mezzo-soprano voice exclusively sings from Julie’s perspective, and the soprano voice sings as her lover, the Madame la Marquise de Florensac, and as Julie herself, at various points.
DETAILS
DURATION:
44 minutes
(6 movements and
one short piano interlude)
INSTRUMENTATION:
Soprano, mezzo-soprano and piano
RECORDING:
Coming soon
(Click to enlarge)
1. THIS IS THE STAGE
mezzo-soprano (Julie)
The first movement introduces Julie’s world of performance, gossip and shadows. It draws inspiration from one of her most infamous exploits: infiltrating a court ball to publicly seduce a noblewoman and (ostensibly) duelling the legion of suitors left in her wake. While this movement does not include the fight, it serves as an introduction to this dynamic character: guided by Julie, we experience her entrance to the ball as a ‘scene’ she is controlling. Here, we meet Julie as a figure who is very aware of – and consciously playing with – the roles she and others take on in society; someone who is almost always performing, both on and offstage. Which role will she step into? Which Julie will you meet today?
2. I HEARD HER NAME
soprano
(Madame de Florensac)
This movement is written from the perspective of Madame la Marquise de Florensac – a well-known socialite and Julie’s most long-standing romantic relationship. Here, the music imagines the breath after a moment of first encounter – the moment you look at someone and know immediately that they will change your life. Florensac is well-connected in society, and the rumours about Julie abound, but this is her first-ever glimpse of Julie – an intense flutter of attraction and magnetic pull. Underneath this fascination, however, is a hint of the underlying danger of such a relationship, and the awareness, even at this early stage, that Julie might shake the structures around her.
3. THE SWORD
mezzo-soprano (Julie)
This movement is about the ecstatic thrill and dance of sword-fighting, giving an encounter with Julie as a virtuosic and passionate fighter. Julie is challenged to a duel by somebody who severely underestimates her. Here, we witness the fight from Julie’s perspective – first as a suspended moment, and then as a dynamic series of movements, steps and parries. Within this ‘real-time’ fight are moments of ecstasy as Julie realises her own superiority; that not only is she better than others, but something else entirely.
4. SPLITTING THE IMAGE
soprano (Julie) and mezzo-soprano (Julie)
This movement is the first moment we experience Julie as an entity split between two singers. The act of performing Julie becomes exposed, and her coherence as a single figure begins to fragment.
Splitting the Image is a soliloquy about what it means to be Julie d’Aubigny: a fighter, a lover, a threat to the age and a conglomeration of other people’s perceptions, wants and ideas. While most of the song cycle places Julie and Florensac into legible ‘scenes’, this movement functions more as a meditation on a person who cannot be coherently and neatly understood or categorised. Splitting the Image explores the difficulty of depicting Julie on stage and the blurring of boundaries between ‘real historical person’ and ‘mythical figure’. It allows Julie herself, in an anachronistic act, to see her own place in history and wrangle with her desire to break the structures around her.
5. NO WORLD WITHOUT US (LOVE DUET)
soprano (Florensac) and mezzo-soprano (Julie)
Florensac wrangles with the dangers of living openly as a queer person in 17th Century France. Julie is someone who loves intensely, is loved intensely, and lives her life without hiding. This duet is the culmination of their relationship – a moment of desire and taking a leap of faith. No World Without Us is about love, sex, eternity and threat – and loving boldly despite the danger of it. This moment is also more deeply about queer love throughout history, channelled through two people who are intensely aware of the time in which they are living and how things might be in the future.
6. I AM JULIE
soprano (Julie) and mezzo-soprano (Julie)
Julie/s tries to piece her/them-self/selves back together through the myths, untruths and gossip, defiantly claiming the acts she is accused of, whether they true or not. This movement plays with joyful anachronism – not only has Julie burned the convent down, but she has also walked on the moon, broken the land speed record on a sports car and shot the president. I am Julie wrangles with the question of whether the ‘truth’ around Julie matters, and why we reach for her through time regardless of whether we can verify the facts around her life. This movement approaches Julie as a figure too big for one body/two bodies/the stage/the world; Julie as an idea about queerness and defiance that we can all take on.