Composer Reiko Futing releases his third album on New Focus, the chamber opera Mechthild in collaboration with librettist and theologian Christian Lehnert. Mechthild of Magdeburg (the German location of the work's premiere) was a 13th century female Christian mystic whose influential texts were rediscovered in the 19th century and have since been studied for their impact on subsequent Northern European religious writings. Futing and Lehnert's setting tackles topics of faith and asceticism in a context that explores the musicality inherent in language and uses quotation to connect different eras of artistic expression through time and memory.