When Mireille Asselin first read about the woman she would play in her next opera, she “started laughing out loud” in disbelief. “I couldn’t believe how cool and feisty, and fascinating she was, and I kept having to check the dates to make sure that I was understanding correctly the time in which she lived and did all of this work,” the acclaimed Canadian soprano recalls, during our recent conversation over Zoom.
That woman is the19th-century journalist Nellie Bly. At just 23 years of age, she feigned insanity in order to expose abuse inside New York’s Blackwell’s Island asylum. Asselin takes on the role in the Canadian premiere of 10 Days in a Madhouse, a new opera by composer Rene Orth and librettist Hannah Moscovitch, directed by Joanna Settle. Playing this week at the Bluma Appel Theatre, the show is a Tapestry Opera and Opera Philadelphia production and commission, co-presented by the Luminato Festival and the Canadian Opera Company (COC), in association with TO Live.
10 Days in a Madhouse
10 Days in a Madhouse follows Bly (Asselin) in her investigation of suspected patient abuse. She pretends to be mentally ill, and gains admission to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island in 1887. However, in a bold structural choice, the opera moves backwards in time, opening at the end of Bly’s ten days and unwinding back towards her arrival–giving audiences a unique perspective on her ordeal.
Once inside the Asylum, Bly drops her act … but no one believes her. What she finds instead is a system designed to break the human spirit, where women’s grief, poverty, and trauma are mistaken for insanity. Among the patients she befriends is Lizzie (Taylor-Alexis DuPont), a woman committed for grieving “too much” over the death of her child, whose story anchors the opera’s emotional weight. Meanwhile, Dr. Josiah Blackwell (Jorell Williams) embodies the institution’s chilling authority, and the Nurse/Matron (Lauren Pearl) enforces its cold discipline. A nine-person ensemble gives voice to the asylum’s other forgotten women.
Beyond a vague memory of the groundbreaking asylum exposé, Asselin barely knew Bly’s story before taking the role. A quick trip to Wikipedia changed all that. Asselin easily rattles off how before Bly went undercover at Blackwell’s Island, the journalist had already built a remarkable resume. A sharp letter to a newspaper editor pushing back against a misogynistic column led to her job. She did an undercover investigation into factory conditions, advocated for divorce law reform, and did reporting on trips to Mexico that caused the country’s government to expel her for criticizing its treatment of the press.
By the time Bly accepted the asylum assignment, Asselin notes that it was something close to a last resort. “No one was hiring a woman to do this kind of work, and she just thought, ‘Well, I can do that’,” Asselin explains. “It certainly wasn’t her first time going undercover. It wasn’t her first time putting herself in dangerous situations for the sake of truth, women’s rights and women’s advancement in the world.”
140 years young, made fresh
What strikes Asselin most is how current and topical it all feels. “If Nellie Bly were living now, we would consider her to be a game-changing sort of human being,” she marvels. “The stuff that she was fighting for and advocating for is still worthy of advocating for and fighting for. It feels so modern and topical, yet it was 140 years ago. It’s amazing how little some things change, even while everything else is changing drastically in the world.”
For a singer with deep roots in Baroque and contemporary repertoire, Asselin says the vocal demands of 10 Days in a Madhouse are not far from her wheelhouse. (Read a previous Sesaya Arts profile of her here.) “It involves pretty hefty singing, lots of range, full use of colours, and investing things with drama.” She smiles, “All of that stuff is prime opera territory.”
What sets the piece apart, however, is an electronics component, which functions almost like another character on stage. “It grounds you in time. There’s this thud of time travel that happens… and there’s this tinnitus effect—this high buzzing and ringing that” causes you to ask, “Am I imagining it, or is it really there?” The effect blurs the line between Nellie’s internal world and the world around her, at key moments when it’s unclear whether what’s happening is real. “It’s almost like you’re watching a movie or a TV show. It feels almost like a soundtrack that the orchestra lives within, and that we live within.”
Green screen for the voice, fixed electronic tempo
All the singers also wear body mics, which is unusual for opera. Asselin is quick to note that this is not for simple amplification. “There’s a process in which voices are transformed, and effects are added on top of the voice. You still hear the voice as the primary thing, but there’s a cool processing that happens to the voice on top of all of that, too,” she says. “It almost feels like green screen for the voice. We’re getting special effects on top of the special effects that are the operatic repertoire.”
The result is something audiences simply have not encountered before. “It melds the worlds of watching a movie and being at musical theatre, or live theatre, or a rave, or an opera. It’s all going to be one new experience, I think.”
One technical wrinkle has been adjusting to a fixed electronic tempo, something that opera singers rarely encounter. Asselin explains how the conductor usually sets tempo through an organic give-and-take with the singers. But here, that flexibility sometimes disappears. “There are moments when the conductor really has to lock the tempo because the electronics are coming in.” For example, it might be “bang on quarter equals 72, and we have to be really clued into that,’” she says. “I might want to sing this faster, but it’s slightly slower than I want. What does that mean, and how do I attack that?” The constraint, she adds, has actually proven productive. “There’s a tension there … your parameters are being given to you, and you have to be creative within those parameters. That’s been a challenge, but it’s a good one.”
Amazing women, an amazing Canadian work
Asselin has performed on major stages internationally, but bringing a new Canadian work home carries special significance for her. “It’s incredibly meaningful,” she smiles. “It’s exactly the kind of work that I’m excited about. It feels really worthy, and checks all of my boxes artistically, vocally, and spiritually. I’m so honoured to have been entrusted with it, and I feel the responsibility of it greatly.”
The production’s pedigree only sharpens that responsibility: the opera premiered to acclaim in Philadelphia in 2023 and earned Best New Opera from the Music Critics Association of North America in 2024. “I feel the weight of wanting to make sure that we present this in its best possible form for our local audiences because I think it’s the kind of theatre that they deserve to see,” Asselin adds. “I really hope that people see it for the sort of genius piece that it is because I think it’s a rare gem.”
Asselin also points to who’s behind the work. “I sort of looked around the room the other day, and realized that it was a bunch of amazing women doing amazing work.” The opera’s text and score were both written by women, and it’s directed by Joanna Settle, with an all-female cast, aside from one role.
“It’s just great. It’s a human story, and it’s a great piece. I hope that’s something people will take at face value.”
10 Days in a Madhouse runs June 16, 18, 20, and 21, 2026, at the Bluma Appel Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, 27 Front Street East, Toronto. Tickets are available at tolive.com.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
