A Note on the Libretto
As a writer, I am drawn to stories from the past, seeking wisdom that I can apply to my own life and to world events. The stories of Greek and Roman mythology are known to illustrate the human condition, and as a result, many characters and their stories have made their way from classical scholarship into common parlance. However these stories don’t show the entirety of human experience. For example, important female characters—whether they be mortal or immortal—rarely interact without the focus of a male character, and if they act independently, without being the object of men’s desires, they are deemed to be virtuous virgins, seemingly without desires of their own.
My solution to this was to write new mythology: to reframe certain characters and stories from classical mythology in order to illustrate a different human condition—one pertinent to me and many others— that of queerness; in this case, women loving women. I also wanted this story to be universally relevant, its theme mirroring our current environmental crisis. When we humans created deities, we gave them authority over us and over the world in which we live, and in doing so abdicated our responsibilities as stewards of the planet. Will we now acknowledge responsibility for our situation? And if so, what will we choose to do?
I heart Artemis presents the figures of Athena and Artemis, two deities, one older and one younger, and imagines an intricate intimate relationship between them. To assist in rewriting these mythologies, I returned to the earliest female writing—indeed the earliest writing attributed to any author—by the Sumerian priestess and poet Enheduanna, whose devotional hymns provide a rich inspiration for this libretto.
— Maria Zajkowski, 2022