Dates

• 10 Apr 2026, 7:30 p.m., Corrie and Sannox Village Hall, Corrie, Arran, Scotland, UK, Ticket link
• 15 Apr 2026, 7 p.m., Gertrudes Street Theatre, Riga, Latvia, LV, Ticket link

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Repertoire Aud the Deep Minded, by Joanna Nicholson

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Description

A chamber opera for soprano (Clíona Cassidy), clarinet (Joanna Nicholson), horn (Andy Saunders), electronics (Alistair MacDonald) with projection art by Kirsty Anderson.

Aud the Deep Minded is a psychological drama imagining the inner world of a Christian Viking and conflicted yet brilliant leader in 9th century Scotland. Inspired by fragments of unreliably documented history, and reframed in the present, this one act opera explores Aud’s transformatory journey from oppressed to oppressor to liberator.

Aud the Deep Minded was a real person, documented in the Icelandic Sagas (and in the TV drama Vikings!). However, different historical accounts conflict over the details of her life. We can be fairly sure she was the daughter of Ketil Flatnose, a Norwegian military commander who oversaw areas we now call the Scottish Western Isles and Orkneys on behalf of King Harald Fairhair, and that, after her husband King Olaf the White of Dublin, and her son Thorstein the Red, were killed she commissioned a boat to be built in secret in the Caithness forests, which are in the north west of Scotland. She then captained this boat to Iceland - at that time an uncharted territory - crewed by members of her family and high-ranking thralls (who were slaves or servants). On settling new territories in the West, she gave the thralls their freedom and parcels of land to farm, forming a community where she lived until her natural death as an old woman. Aud was a Christian at a time when most Vikings were still worshiping pagan gods.

The real Aud lived in the 9th Century, so her tale is so far back in time that she is blurred by storytelling, embellishment and omission, and I wondered… what if she were reincarnated, if perhaps she was a supernatural being, present throughout time? This is my imagining of her story, or what might be her story, and how she might tell it.

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Performers Clíona Cassidy, Alistair MacDonald, Andy Saunders, Joanna Nicholson

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Promoter Arran Theatre and Arts Trust

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Submitted by Andy Saunders