The final descendent of Serbian nobility, journalist Elisabeth Thury joined the resistance after being banned from the Social Democratic party, and was branded a murderess in poisoning deaths that were taken to trial.
Although Princess Vukobrankovics, The Three Lives of Elisabeth Thury is a radio play about the revolutionist and visionary who died during WWII in a concentration camp, in an indirect way it’s also about the writer and composer who helps bring Thury to life.
Award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and internationally-known crime novelist Susanne Ayoub delivers Thury’s story to the masses via this radio play, co-produced by ORF Austria and DLF Germany radio. An Austrian-Iraqi born in Baghdad in 1956, Susanne uses the lives of real women to tell her stories of fiction. This is comfortable territory for Susanne.
International composer and violinist Emer Kinsella is one of the few women making her mark today. From Dublin, Ireland, she picked up a classical violin at the age of two and a half, and set out on a course of a musical odyssey that took her from London, to Berlin, to Vienna and other destinations worldwide. Composing for a radio play about a strong woman, Emer’s layered emotionality and deep undertones influences the moving and dramatic storyline.
Emer’s talent has been described in many ways, from textural to atmospheric. It’s evident that she employs the full range of her senses and experiences to create her masterpieces. Her works are fitting yet transcending, obvious to any listener of the radio play, where audio is the primary mode of interpretation. Her skill brings flesh and blood to Thury in a haunting way, reminding the audience that this was a real woman who lived and died standing for what she believed to be right in the world.
There is cohesion to this radio play that extends beyond the life of Thury to include Ayoub, Kinsella, and perhaps any other woman who challenges the world in which they live.
