SENTINEL
A CHAMBER OPERA
Created by Danielle Birrittella
Composed by Annika Socolofsky
Libretto by Claressinka Anderson
“Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition, and myth frame our response.”
— ARTHUR SCHLESSINGER
An agoraphobic woman constructs a virtual reality in an attempt to cope with life after her beloved is killed in a mass shooting. Through the use of a psychedelic drug discovered on the dark web she is able to confront her trauma and reconstruct her memories to find healing.
Invoking the timelessness of grief, SENTINEL is set in a future outside of time. Will our heroine leave the lush virtual world of her own construction and risk reentry into a world she is unable to design? Control and surrender are at the heart of this opera.
Our characters traverse a kaleidoscopic journey through the warm depths of human connection, while facing the brittle cold of profound loss and loneliness. The opera navigates a manufactured digital world, the psychedelic realm, and a natural world rapidly disappearing from humanity’s abuse.
The music of SENTINEL follows our heroine and her beloved on a journey through altered states of consciousness. An accompanying chamber ensemble and choir capture these internal and external sonic landscapes of contrast and contradiction—supporting, fighting, and ultimately guiding them to transformation.
PRAISE FOR OUR TEAM
“A BREATH OF PURE CREATIVE POWER.”
— OPERA WIRE
“UNLIKE ANY THING I’VE EVER SEEN. ONE OF THE MORE MOVING EXPERIENCES I’VE HAD IN RECENT MEMORY.”
— THEATRE TIMES
“RAPTLY LYRICAL… AWE INSPIRING.”
— THE NEW YORKER
“THE RIGHT BALANCE BETWEEN EDGY PRECISION AND FREE WHEELING EXUBERANCE.”
— THE GUARDIAN
“A HOPEFUL VISION OF WHAT OPERA CAN BE AND DO IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY.”
— PARTERRE BOX
“SENSATIONAL, REVEALING LAYER UPON LAYER OF SHEER MUSICAL GORGEOUSNESS CAPABLE, FROM THE FIRST BARS, OF LIFTING THE SPIRITS.”
— LA TIMES
DANIELLE BIRRITTELLA
Danielle Birrittella (creator) is a California-based performer, creator, and composer of new operatic work whose projects have been lauded as “a breath of pure creative power” (Opera Wire). Danielle’s extensive background in opera and experimental theatre yield an artist with an instinct for pushing the boundaries of contemporary classical music.
As a creator of new works, Danielle bridges new music, devised performance, and film with a particular focus on collaborative engagement with poets, dancers, and visual artists. Her dual roles as creator and performer of her operatic projects deliver a unique level of authenticity and intimacy to her pieces. In addition, her work as a practicing depth psychotherapist heavily influences her creative endeavors. By weaving layers of symbolism, archetypal motifs, and emotional insight, she explores the psyche’s capacity for healing and transformation.
Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Opera Wire, The Financial Times, and on NPR. She is the creator of Sonnets To Orpheus, an immersive song cycle set to Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry, and co-creator of Magdalene, a chamber opera set to Marie Howe’s poetry scored by fourteen female composers.
Danielle’s “high, crystalline soprano” has been said to be “mesmerizing… as hypnotic to watch as she is to hear” (The Wall Street Journal, Parterre). As a performer she is “exposed, intelligent, earnest… powerful and persuasive” and has a “radiant, nearly angelic presence” (The New York Times, The Financial Times).
She holds degrees from California Institute of the Arts (MFA), Pacifica Graduate Institute (MA), and New York University (BA), and is a member of SAG/AFTRA and ASCAP. In addition to her artistic work, Danielle maintains a clinical depth psychotherapy private practice, The Intuitive Voice.
ANNIKA SOCOLOFSKY
Annika Socolofsky (composer) is a composer and avant folk vocalist who explores corners and colors of the voice frequently deemed to be “untrained” and not “classical.” Described as “unbearably moving” (Gramophone) and “just the right balance between edgy precision and freewheeling exuberance” (The Guardian), her music erupts from the embodied power of the human voice and is communicated through mediums ranging from orchestral and operatic works to unaccompanied folk ballads and unapologetically joyous Dolly Parton covers.
Annika writes extensively for her own voice, including composing a growing repertoire of “feminist rager-lullabies” titled Don’t say a word, which serves to confront centuries of damaging lessons taught to young children by retelling old lullaby texts for a new, queer era. Annika has taken Don’t say a word on the road, performing with ensembles including Eighth Blackbird, New European Ensemble, Albany Symphony, Knoxville Symphony, Latitude 49, and Contemporaneous. Her follow-up feminist rager-lullaby song cycle in collaboration with ~Nois, titled I Tell You Me, was recognized by the Chicago Tribune as “grotesquely gorgeous… among the most captivating compositions heard the whole festival [Ear Taxi 2021]” and was included in their “Chicago’s Top 10 for classical music, opera and jazz that defined 2021.” Recordings of her music are available on New Amsterdam, Bright Shiny Things, Naxos, and Innova record labels. Her research focuses on contemporary vocal music, using the music of Dolly Parton to create a pedagogical approach to composition that is inclusive of a wide range of vocal qualities, genres, and colors. She is Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Colorado Boulder, and is the recipient of the 2021 Gaudeamus Award. She holds her PhD in Composition from Princeton University.
CLARESSINKA ANDERSON
Claressinka Anderson (librettist) Claressinka Anderson is a Los Angeles–based poet and writer. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Oxford Poetry, Los Angeles Review of Books, ONLY POEMS, North American Review, Boulevard, Pleiades, Autre Magazine, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (Carla), and elsewhere, as well as in the anthologies Best New Poets and Choice Words: Writers on Abortion. Anderson is the winner of the 2022 Michelle Boisseau Poetry Prize selected by Traci Brimhall. A finalist for the 2025 Leonard Cohen Poetry Prize and 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize, she is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee.
Anderson is the librettist for Songs of the Scorpion. Through her ongoing collaborations with artists, her work engages the interstitial spaces of contemporary art, literature, and music.
Born to a Czech mother and American father, Anderson was raised in London, England. She has worked as an art dealer, advisor and curator, and was the founder of the gallery and art salon, Marine Projects (2009-2017). Her curatorial work has been reviewed in numerous publications, including Art Forum, The Los Angeles Times, Vogue, Elle, and Modern Painters. Anderson has served on the boards and committees of several arts-related institutions and organizations, including The Vincent Price Art Museum, The Santa Monica Museum of Art, The Venice Family Clinic, Arttable, and Sexy Beast for Planned Parenthood.
Anderson holds an MFA in writing and literature from Bennington College. She is a poetry editor at Bear Review .
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