TRUE LOVE

True Love is a cycle of eight songs for soprano and piano by the Dutch composer Renske Vrolijk, recorded by the musicians for whom it was written: soprano Bauwien van der Meer and pianist Caecilia Boschman. The title song originated in 2018 within Fantastic Women, a theatrical program of new works by ten female composers that the duo devised to confront male dominance. Vrolijk expanded it into a complete cycle between 2022 and 2023.

The cycle follows Mary, a young woman in an American Evangelical milieu. After a public abstinence pledge as a “reborn virgin,” she is assaulted by a fellow student, becomes pregnant, and is stripped step by step of medical care, legal rights, and support by church and state, a process presented to her as “true love.” Male and female perspectives alternate: Samuel Pepys and Donald Trump, a traditional mother, Mary herself, a doctor personifying Texas Senate Bill 8, anti-abortion militants, and the nuns of a maternity home. Van der Meer takes on every role.

The libretto is a montage of Vrolijk’s own words and unaltered sources: Pepys’s seventeenth-century diary, Trump’s 2005 Access Hollywood recording, biblical scripture, Evangelical videos, and the text of the Texas Heartbeat Act. Lyrical, at times deceptively sweet vocal lines and piano figures carry verbatim texts of considerable violence.

Beneath the surface lies a web of references. In the opening song, the top notes of the piano chords trace the slowed-down pitch contour of one of Trump’s recorded phrases. The chant Beata es, Virgo Maria, the Dies irae, and the Dutch popular song Mama, je bent de liefste van de hele wereld serve as hidden melodies; madrigalisms let the notes enact the words.

Released on November 6, 2026, three days after the American midterm elections in which reproductive rights were again at stake, the cycle will be presented that evening by Vrolijk at the John Adams Institute’s Midterm Madness: The Aftershow at Pakhuis de Zwijger, Amsterdam. True Love shows how rights that seemed settled can be dismantled through law, pulpit, and language, and how easily that loss is dressed up as care.

Vrolijk teaches composition at ArtEZ University of the Arts. Van der Meer sings in the Netherlands Radio Choir; Boschman is keyboardist with Sinfonia Rotterdam. Recorded on February 25, 2026, at Splendor Amsterdam, with the composer as producer and engineer.

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