FULL LILI ELBE (Tobias Picker) Works & Process Documentary Santa Fe Opera New York 2025 Lucia Lucas, Sylvia D’Eramo, Aaron Blake, Craig Ketter

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: LILI ELBE   
• Composer: Picker Tobias   
• Libretto: Aryeh Lev Stollman  
• Venue & Opera Company: Peter B.Lewis Theatre, Guggenheim Museum, New York, Santa Fe Opera  
• Recorded: October 27, 2025
• Type: Other
• Singers: Lucia Lucas, Sylvia D’Eramo, Aaron Blake, Craig Ketter
• Conductor:   
• Orchestra: Craig Ketter, PIANO  
• Stage Director:   
• Costume Designer:   

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Works & Process  
• Date Published: 2025  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs, gensubs  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  PROGRAM
  Performance excerpts interspersed with discussion

  Excerpt 1: “Bogs and swamps. Twisted trees.” From Act 1, Scene 2
  Lili Elbe, Gerda Wegener

  Excerpt 2: “You pulled it off last night.” From Act 1, Scene 4
  Lili Elbe, Gerda Wegener

  Excerpt 3: “Tomorrow let’s take a stroll in the Tuileries.” From Act 1, Scene 6
  Claude LeJeune, Lili Elbe

  Excerpt 4: “I’m sorry, Claude, this lovely afternoon is over.” From Act 1, Scene 7
  Lili Elbe, Claude LeJeune

  Excerpt 5: “I do not know if what he says can really be achieved.” From Act 1, Scene 8
  Lili Elbe

  Excerpt 6: “Oh, Claude, you’re here.” From Act 2, Scene 7
  Lili Elbe, Claude LeJeune, Gerda Wegener

  Lili Elbe is the latest work by Grammy-winning American composer Tobias Picker and librettist Aryeh Lev Stollman, commissioned by Konzert und Theater St. Gallen.
  The opera Lili Elbe tells the story of the woman of the same name, Lili Elbe, who was married to the painter Gerda Wegener and had one of the first gender reassignment procedures carried out in the 1930s. Above all, Lili Elbe is the story of a great love that overcomes all obstacles and is therefore one of the great works of the opera repertoire. At the same time, the opera provides an insight into the life of a woman who was born with a body that was read as male, had her coming out and her transition at a time when gender reassignment surgery was still completely new territory and there were practically no role models. Lili Elbe is also a work about identity and the courage to do pioneering work.

  Lili’s journey — marked by love, loss and self-discovery — is the true story of a Danish painter who, with the steadfast support of her wife Gerda, became one of the first to undergo gender-affirmation surgery nearly a century ago.

  Named “Best World Premiere” at the 2024 Oper! Awards, we are thrilled to present the American premiere of Tobias Picker and Aryeh Lev Stollman’s groundbreaking new opera. Former Apprentice Singer, baritone Lucia Lucas, makes her Santa Fe Opera debut as Lili Elbe, and returning soprano Sylvia D’Eramo sings the role of Gerda Wegener, Lili’s supportive wife who was also a celebrated artist. This production brings the artists’ milieux of 1920s Paris and Copenhagen to life with direction by James Robinson, set design by Allen Moyer and costumes by Marco Piemontese.

  Synopsis

  • Act I

  In the late 1920’s, the actress Anna Larssen of the Royal Danish Theater, having just premiered the role of Orpheus in a new play, could not appear for the last sitting of her portrait, the centerpiece of a new exhibition. Anna makes an unusual suggestion; that the artist, Gerda Wegener, ask Lili Elbe, (at that time known as Gerda’s husband, the artist Einar Wegener), to dress up and pose as Anna. At this sitting Lili is brought to a profound self-discovery, never before acknowledged. Like Orpheus compelled to look back at Eurydice, Lili can never again turn away from the truth of who she is. Despite the support of Gerda, their friends Eric and Hélène, and Lili’s brother Marius, Lili encounters hostility and rejection from her sister Dagmar and later her own mother. Through the efforts of Hélène she is introduced to Professor Warnekros who agrees to operate on her at the Municipal Women’s Clinic in Dresden.

  • Act II

  After her first surgery, a dramatic encounter with the King of Denmark leads to an extraordinary decree — Lili is legally recognized as a woman, and her marriage to Gerda is annulled.

  Despite the seeming loss of their deep relationship, both Lili and Gerda find temporary love in different quarters, Lili with the perfumer Claude Lejeune, and Gerda with the Italian Major Fernando Porta.

  When Claude Lejeune asks Lili to marry him, Lili delays until she can have surgery to become a mother, which Professor Warnekros says he can make possible. He and the Matron of the clinic choose a young woman to be the experimental uterus donor. Neither Lili nor the Young Woman suspect what is in this plan.

  Lili, dying from complications of her surgery, writes and thanks the absent Gerda for the flowers she has sent every day from Rome. In return, Gerda sends a final letter. From two distant cities, their voices rise together in a last duet — declaring their love for each other that only grows and never looks back.

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