In 2005, Margaret Atwood offered up a bold retelling of Homer’s Odyssey from the point of view of Odysseus’ wife, Penelope. Atwood’s novella, The Penelopiad, challenges Homer’s presentation of Penelope as the hero’s patient, doting, and dutiful wife by taking readers into her interior world, where we gain insight into her resentments and rationale during her husband’s twenty-year absence. By handing Penelope narrative control, Atwood illustrates the power of perspective in determining how events are portrayed and understood, interrogating conditions which lie at the very heart of mythic storytelling.

In The Penelopiad, Penelope’s voice is also in question. She is periodically interrupted by her twelve maidservants who perform the function of a Greek chorus, countering Penelope’s perspective by expressing their own take on events through eleven different forms of song. By the time we have heard Penelope’s account, and the chorus’ probing questions, the story seems well-primed for another retelling. Myths, of course, demand to be heard again, and again.

Dr Emily Pillinger, from the Department of Classics at King’s, takes up that challenge in her project, Penelope’s Web, which explores how ancient stories can be retold in new ways through contemporary opera. In a series of practice-based workshops with artists, musicians and school students, led by composer, Dr Cheryl Frances-Hoad and librettist, Dr Jeanne Pansard-Besson, the project set out to amplify the voices of Penelope and the twelve enslaved women by developing a module operatic scene inspired by Atwood’s novella.

The Alternative Queen’s Speech

The project’s first workshop, The Alternative Queen’s Speech, took place in 2022 with students from Cheney School, a team of MA students from the University of Oxford, two mezzo-soprano singers and a professional weaver. Together, the participants engaged in discussions and rehearsals ahead of a final performance which took place at the end of the week. The workshop furthered Atwood’s narrative experiment by splitting Penelope’s voice into a multiplicity of vocal parts and bringing to life the voices of the enslaved girls in a new choral group.

Since then, the opera has been in continued development with contributions from a range of student and artist groups. In 2024, with renewed support from the UK Research and Innovation Arts and Humanities Research Council, Penelope’s Web has been able to run two more week-long workshops with students from Cheney School, choral scholars from the choir of King’s College London, and the girl choristers of Christ Church, Oxford, the Frideswide Voices.

I Am Penelope – The Other Side of Myth

The first of these, titled I am Penelope: The Other Side of Myth, took place in April 2024. The workshop invited Year 8 and 9 students from Cheney school to respond creatively to Penelope’s description of her life in the underworld in Atwood’s novella. Participants produced an array of artworks, poems, journal entries and animations. They were also asked to consider how music might be used to amplify the voices of previously unheard characters in ancient myth, either as individuals performing solo or collectively, as a chorus.

By thinking practically through the impact different vocal arrangements had on shaping the story’s narrative, student discussions naturally began to reflect the enquiry which underlies Atwood’s novella, with one student noting, “you change the perspective, you change the story.”

Workshop: Embodiment and the Sonic Worlds of Penelope’s Underworld

In June 2024, another workshop titled Embodiment and the Sonic Worlds of Penelope’s Underworld, looked at developing the performance of Penelope’s story through sound and movement. The project team were keen to consider how ancient soundscapes might be recreated through contemporary music, and how dance might support the animation of the Odyssey’s minor characters.

Three mezzo-sopranos and the Choir of King’s College London performed a section of the opera, titled ‘In Ithaka’ in the Greenwood Theatre at King’s. The performance was followed by a Q&A with the project’s performers, musicians and academics, during which the project team were able to discuss the dynamic processes and cultural contexts that have made a new interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey possible.

Writing Home: Myth, Letters and Refugee Well-Being

In November 2023, the Penelope’s Web team participated in the 2023 Being Human Festival of the Humanities. In the event, ‘Writing Home: Myth, Letters and Refugee Well-Being’, migrants in the asylum system in Folkstone were introduced to the myth of Penelope and Odysseus, including Penelope’s fictionalised letter composed by the Roman poet Ovid, and the music that Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Jeanne Pansard-Besson have created. Participants shared their own stories, journeys, and music.

The workshop was in conjunction with the Letters of Refuge project by Dr James Corke Webster - more of which can be found in a Spotlight feature on that project.

Penelope’s Web has seen the team at King’s collaborate with artists and scholars from the University of Oxford, the University of Durham, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Princeton University, and New York University, establishing a new network of institutions interested in how interdisciplinary studies — specifically the interrelated studies of music, language, and storytelling — can offer important new insights into ancient Greek mythology and culture.

In its development of a brand new musical work, the project has continually highlighted creative and educational practices as valuable forms of cultural exchange, showing how vital both are to sustaining the cycle that has seen the Odyssey and other great tales travel the breadth of time, from antiquity well into the 21^st century.