This story was irresistible to me since it wove several threads of my narrative. The association of this life-size doll and the Anatomical Venus was suggested to me by Joanna Ebenstein in her book The Anatomical Venus: Wax, God, Death and the Ecstatic (2016). The link to my own love of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (and the discovery of being Jewish in only my thirties – together with the coincidence of my mother choosing this same piece of music for her funeral) was one of those research twists, when several themes braid together effortlessly. The fact that Kathleen Ferrier recorded her famous rendition, with Bruno Walter conducting, when she knew she was dying of cancer added special connotation to the use of Mahler’s music in the production and in this digital publication. The musical saw as a choice of instrument to accompany the production in performance proved not just my conscious pun on cutting but provided an emotional punctuation and musical space during the. Its sound, close to the violin but with its own timbre and vibrato.