The New York Philharmonic last week premiered a new multimedia oratorio that uses music and old images and film footage to commemorate one of the deadliest industrial incidents in the history of the U.S. – the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
“Fire in my Mouth,” by composer Julia Wolfe, is sung by a chorus of 146 women and girls, a number corresponding to that of the victims killed in the disaster, who were mostly female. Many were immigrants to the U.S. and some were as young as 14.