The founders of Marginalia, Anna-Luise Wagner and Chloë Allison, both completed their doctoral research at the University of Cambridge, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Anna’s thesis examined the career of seventeenth-century writer, opera singer, and courtesan Margherita Costa. Chloë’s work, inspired by undergraduate courses on medieval music, explored how skilled Parisian singers at the end of the twelfth century went about creating new kinds of complex polyphony to be sung in the equally new and impressive cathedral of Notre Dame.

As well as being academics, Anna and Chloë both sustain vibrant performing careers and it was on various Cambridge stages, rather than in seminars or libraries, that they first forged a partnership. In the 2019 University Opera Society’s production of Bizet’s Carmen, Anna’s valiant Micaëla was pitted against Chloë as the ultimate femme fatale. A year later, Anna had the opportunity to turn the tables as the cruel stepsister tormenting Chloë’s Cinderella in Rossini’s La Cenerentola. More recently, they have had the privilege of being involved in crafting Green Opera’s Fillu, a Lieder-opera about the life of Eugenie Schumann, the youngest daughter of Clara and Robert, and her lover, the Austrian soprano Marie Fillunger. The project brought to light the almost entirely unknown story of their love and the familial and societal pressure it was put under. In doing so, it brought a diversity to the operatic stage that is still so seldom seen.