
Paola Prestini & Magos Herrera Center Sor Juana's Radical Mysticism in "Primero Sueño"
In their stunning processional opera, co-creators Paola Prestini and Magos Herrera and director Louisa Proske present the story of Sor Juana, a 17th-century proto-feminist nun whose passion for knowledge pitted her against powerful men – and her own voracious intellect. Many of Sor Juana’s intellectual and political battles are operatic material, but Primero Sueño dramatizes her creative process as a radical act: she reconciled her creative doubts by believing that her work would echo across the ages, and Prestini and Herrera prove that true, honoring her vision as a triumph over the men who burned her books.
In this striking dialogue, it is fitting that Prestini and Herrera focus on Sor Juana’s process of writing her magnum opus poem, Primero Sueño. “For women,” wrote Audre Lorde, “poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence… Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so that it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”