An advert for my new opera The Rapture rejected by the Meta bots. "Bible and Bombs in Palestine - opera".

So first up last month was Longborough’s Götterdämmerung dress rehearsal; clearly, an intense labour of love from the whole team and a lucid, unfussy production. It was well-sung too, but the orchestra was boss, hogging the limelight not just in terms of volume but in what it has to say, which is a lot. Why do singers like performing this music so much? I suppose to be up on the stage with those sounds swirling underneath must give one a sense of exhilaration, like conquering a mountain, arriving on a dangerous ridge while gazing at the wonderful view all around.  And it is wonderful, what goes on in the pit. But I find it difficult to enter Wagner’s world and empathise with the characters. There was a time, also, when the ending, and hence the point of the story, seemed absolutely cataclysmic and it was thrilling to experience the final denouement. Nowadays, the metaphorical Rhine seems to flood somewhere every year and even wetlands, not to mention forests, burn remorselessly. To envision “das Ende” when the planet appears already in its death throes feels almost a little out-dated. And is it moral that Brünnhilde must immolate herself in order to right the wrongs of men?

The idea of the Dementia Friendly Opera came as a shared solution to separate problems being discussed between Edward Lambert of The Music Troupe and Andy Northcott of the Geller Institute of Ageing and Memory. The Music Troupe was established in 2014 as a means for Edward to return opera to its roots, moving away from the grand halls and lavish productions that it has become associated with and moving back to the story telling tradition, with contemporary chamber performances tailored to smaller, intimate spaces. The Music Troupe wished to expand outside of well-worn theatre venues to find new audiences for Opera outside of its established base. 

At the same time Andy and his partners at GIAM, a research institute that focusses on improving the life of people living with dementia, were looking to address a pressing issue of their own. They had found that while there was a huge body of research showing the benefits of music as a therapeutic tool for people living with dementia, in practice the music chosen often made assumptions on the preferences on older people which could be wildly out of step with their individual taste. Too often musical choices in hospitals, care homes and community events were selected for their safeness, on an assumption of what would be acceptable or inoffensive to an audience, often based on a projection of older people years if not decades out of step with actual older people, while homogenising what will naturally be a range of idiosyncratic likes and dislikes.

There is a well established body of research and practice on the use music as a therapeutic tool for people living with dementia, with a body of evidence suggesting that engagement with music can minimise distress and agitation associated with dementia. (Vink et al 2003, Alfredo et al 2008, McDermott et al 2012, Wall and Duffy 2013), although there remains debate over how this is best delivered (Koger et al 1999). There is supported by a further significant body of research showing how music can be used to promote reminiscence, using music to strengthen memory, recall (Brotons et al 2000, Larkin 2006) and even recital (Baird and Sampson 2009). For those caring for somebody living with dementia seeing them remember old times can be hugely valuable, but, for those living with dementia, reminiscence is often a test they are sabotaged to fail. Even when successful, this means spending your later years in a cycle of nostalgia, living in a past that for the person living with dementia is increasingly difficult to remember. Instead we wanted to create new memories for people living with dementia and loved ones, enabling them to keep living in the now, engaging and re-engaging with the arts they previously enjoyed or to experience them for the first time, and to create these memories in a genuine setting rather than in a watered-down version of the real thing. 

Allowing older people to remain engaged with their communities, local events and the arts is important to what we do at GIAM. We are all living longer, with enhanced knowledge of well being and nutrition coupled with continuing leaps in medicine and surgery mean many of us will live well into our eighties and beyond, but society has not adjusted to support this. For too many people ageing means an end to social involvement, something hugely exacerbated when an individual or partner has dementia, even if they remain largely independent. Research (Rafnsson et al 2020) has shown that maintaining social connections and participation in activities are crucial to avoiding loneliness that can greatly exacerbate the impacts of both ageing and dementia. At GIAM we have been looking for ways to promote this, bringing diverse communities together to experience new performances, new mediums and new people as a means to promote not only living longer, but living fun and fulfilled lives.  

Our solution is the Dementia Friendly Opera, starting with a performance of The Last Siren held at Lawrence Hall at The University of West London in Ealing. The Hall is located in one of the world’s great cities for the arts, but access to these world leading performances is perceived as impossible for many older people, which we hope this performance will address. The performance itself is an unabridged version of a brand-new opera, but the auditorium itself will be set up to be dementia friendly. This will not be the first time opera has been used in conjunction with improving the lifes of people with dementia. Studies using Chinese Opera have shown its benefits as a therapy for people living with dementia (Chen et al 2020), but previous attempts at such engagement using western opera have made dementia and memory loss the topic of the performance (Fuller 2012, Wheeler 2023), rather than offering an escape from it.

​Key to what we aim to achieve here is that this is a new experience, a new production shown in its original form, rather than repurposing familiar material in diluted formats. The production itself will be shown as it would to any audience, a chamber opera performed in its entirety by professional musicians and singers. Unique to this performance will be the safety of the venue, which will be staffed by trained dementia friends experienced in working with people living with dementia and their friends and families. The auditorium will be set out to minimise fall risks and the audience will be permitted to move around, speak and leave without admonishment. We will have quiet areas prepared for those who do not enjoy the performance, or cannot sit through the whole production, and provide light refreshments, and volunteers will be on hand to assist with guidance to toilets and other facilities as needed. At its core we are not providing a safe or neutered performance, but instead a safe place for people to experience the arts they previously enjoyed or are coming to afresh.

And how appropriate that Opera North and South Asian Arts UK (also Leeds-based) should choose the love of Orpheus and Eurydice to be the subject of a collaboration between them, one which turned out to be a true marriage of musical styles. ‘Monteverdi reimagined’, indeed. The production’s point of departure is the lovers’ wedding party in a suburban back garden sumptuously created by Leslie Travers. The sun is shining and the musicians sit arrayed in the flower beds, Western and Indian instruments intermingled. The production by Anna Himali Howard is as restrained as the musical pace, intimate and tender, allowing the beauty of it all to speak for itself. Laurence Cummings presides discretely from the harpsichord, while the Indian classical musicians perform the music of Jasdeep Singh Degun, who directs from the sitar. 
Thus it was that early baroque and Indian classical music came to be heard cheek by jowl. Right from the start, the role of La Musica was divided between Deepa Nair Rasiya and Amy Freston singing in their respective musical styles. Likewise, nymphs and shepherds were taken by the operatic quartet of Claire Lees, Frances Gregory, Xavier Hetherington and Simon Grange with contrasting contributions from their Asian counterparts, Sanchita Pal, Chiranjeeb Chakraborty and Vijay Rajput - the latter two paired as shepherds who entertained us in an ornament competition.  If early baroque opera delights in the contrast between recitative and aria, then in this Orpheus we are treated to even greater contrasts of cultural styles, the western gently extroverted alternating with the Indian, soft and introverted. Sometimes they tellingly combine or cross-fertilize each other.
Orpheus himself - even he played the violin - was tenderly sung by Nicholas Watts, excelling in his virtuosic rendering of Possente Spirito. The Messenger at the end of Act 2 was passionately sung by Kezia Bienek and the Australian bass Dean Robinson was a sonorous Pluto. Those were the main roles taken by the ‘Western’ singers performing Monteverdi’s music. The Indian cast sang mostly in their mother tongues, so as well as Striggio’s Italian we heard Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi and Bengali. For them, standing rather than sitting, acting and projecting emotions and voices into a large theatre would have been outside their usual comfort zones. They stood their ground, so to speak, and drew us into their enchanting musical world. Eurydice (the young Tamil singer Ashnaa Sasikaran), Hope (Yarlinie Thanabalasingham) and Prosperina (Chandra Chakraborty) were performed by experts in the Carnatic traditions of southern India. Instrumentalists in the Hindustani traditions also took major singing roles: Kaviraj Singh is a santoor player who also sang Caronte and Kirpal Singh Panesar provided the evening’s deus ex machina simultaneously singing and playing the role of Apollo. 
The result of this cultural exchange was utterly compelling: the audience was entranced. The company’s success reflects on the richness of talent in today’s society and hopefully the subsequent tour will be extended to encompass the capital and other cities. It’s worth shouting out that projects like this can help to ensure the renewal and survival of opera by spreading the message that the genre is infinitely versatile and inclusive. This was a one-off, though, surely impossible to repeat. Instead, the next step must be to commission artists with feet in both musical traditions to create a true blend of contemporary, rather than historical, cultural styles. Clearly, this project was no competition between sound-worlds but a sensitive convergence of musical cultures which succeeded more than anyone probably dared to imagine. But, it has to be said, the experience was predominantly a musical one. The theatrical and dramatic experiments of the early baroque were largely overshadowed by the intricacies of Indian music which, while opening up new aural vistas, evolved at its own pace. When the evening’s climax is an enthralling duet between two percussionists (Shahbaz Hussain on tabla, RN Prakash on ghatam (water jug)) you know that Monteverdi has taken a back seat to something very different - and rather more fun.

Music by Claudio Monteverdi and Jasdeep Singh Degun
Musical arrangements by Ashok Gupta
Original Italian text by Alessandro Striggio
Translations by Ustad Dharambir Singh MBE and Shahbaz Hussain
Additional translations by Chandra Chakraborty, Amarjit Dhami, Saikrishnakumar Rangachari, Deepa Nair Rasiya
Sangeet (Music) - Deepa Nair Rasiya
La Musica (Music) - Amy Freston
Charavaaho (Shepherd) - Xavier Hetherington
Apsaro (Nymph) - Sanchita Pal
Charavaaho (Shepherd) - Chiranjeeb Chakraborty
Orpheus - Nicholas Watts
Eurydice - Ashnaa Sasikaran
Charavaaho (Shepherd) - Vijay Rajput
Charavaaho (Shepherd) - Laurence Cummings
Apsaro (Nymph) - Claire Lees
Charavaaho (Shepherd) - Simon Grange
Apsaro (Nymph) - Frances Gregory
Silvia (The Messenger)- Kezia Bienek
Caronte - Kaviraj SinghNambikkai (Hope) - Yarlinie Thanabalasingam 
Proserpina - Chandra Chakraborty
Pluto - Dean Robinson
Apollo - Kirpal Singh Panesar

The creative team
Music Director/Harpsichord - Laurence Cummings
Music Director/Sitar - Jasdeep Singh Degun
Director - Anna Himali Howard
Set and Costume Designer - Leslie Travers
Lighting Designer - Jackie Shemesh
Choreographer - Urja Desai Thakore
Sound Designer - Camilo Tirado
Touring to Newcastle (05 Nov), Nottingham (12 Nov) and Salford (19 Nov) and available on OperaVision from 31 October

I'm not sure I understood the music more than anyone else did. (The roadies certainly didn't.) But I remember feeling how refreshing it was to get away from cerebral modernity: there was a whiff in the air of California, of breaking down barriers, of skating over conventional thinking. I've still got the LP, and the one with Boulez made in the following year.

Thereafter, Zappa used the Synclavier to realise his vision. For obvious reasons, it was cheaper than hiring an orchestra; although I remember seeing the Synclavier in a presentation (sales pitch?) in London sometime earlier, when it cost more than my first house. But it wasn't long before computers offered these facilities - and, of course, far more besides. I got my first Mac with Finale in 1989, though it wasn't for a few years that it became easy and speedy to use: at first, when writing an orchestral piece, you'd take a coffee break during a screen redraw - and it would still keep you waiting.. 

Some background is necessary. The Garden Venture was an initiative by two ROH staff members at the time, Wilfred Judd, a director and Kenneth Richardson, the opera company manager. Discussions had been flowing regarding the future of opera and, in particular, how to present opportunities for its renewal by new creators. I was part of the ROH community, and a composer too; I was also part of the flourishing outreach programme at the time and our chief mission during the 1980’s was to inspire and assist schools in making their own operas. I’d suggested the incorporation of a Royal Opera Van which would complement that programme by touring small-scale performances of new works. (Unlikely as it sounds, surely this should happen?)

Be that as it may, some of these ideas came together and Wilfred and Kenneth got the go-ahead for their plan to produce a handful of new operas which were to be (if I remember rightly) each about 50 minutes long, four of them produced over two evenings in a mini-festival at the Donmar Warehouse around the corner. They had to find the money themselves: this would not be part of the House’s budget. In an extraordinary flight of imagination and initiative for the time, the young Independent newspaper agreed to host a crowd-funding scheme in which readers were asked to contribute £100 to support the Venture. It worked; donations flooded in.

In the meantime, I’d been instructed to start work. But on what? At first, I had no ideas. I knew the kind of work I wanted to create but not its subject matter. Then one Sunday afternoon I heard a radio drama called One Thing More about the Anglo-Saxon poet Caedmon. That period in our history, Caedmon’s story derived from Bede and the writer’s lyrical treatment of it, stirred me into action. There was the small matter of the play’s creator who turned out to be Christopher Fry (who he? I asked). Enquiries through the BBC led us to approach him and I well remember the day Wilfred and I drove to the depths of East Sussex to visit him and persuade this wonderful elderly gentleman to allow us to mess with his precious creation.

It has to be said, The Garden Venture wasn’t a success. I guess the blame lies with the fact that it was a ROH offshoot. Expectations were high, artists had to be paid properly, productions were costly.  This wasn’t the umbrella for first-timers like me nor for experimental music-theatre makers. The Independent was bringing the full glare of publicity down on a handful of unknown composers lacking opera-writing experience. That was the point, of course, but full of pitfalls. In addition, as far as I can recall, the artists involved were all freelance outsiders. There were plenty of singers and musicians within the House .who would no doubt have been eager for some extra-curricular activity, but scheduling and contractual problems precluded that. So the one big advantage of the opera company - its personnel - wasn’t exploited.

I was affected by a change at the top: with an eye on TV programming, newly-arrived Jeremy Isaacs influenced the commissioning of the composers by suggesting more operas with shorter durations of 20 minutes each. I’d been given a head-start with Caedmon and was by then half-way through its composition. How would my longer piece fit in with the rest? There were now seven composers and they decided to play four on one evening and three on the other. Caedmon was scheduled to start the 3-piece evening. Then my colleagues  complained that Caedmon was too long and insisted on getting it placed last on the programme. That was ok by me - until I learned that their 20-minute pieces had actually doubled in length. With quite complex interval changes, that meant Caedmon didn’t start until nearly 10pm on the first night. This was, of course, before the advent of computer music technology and Caedmon had been hand-written on hundreds of sheets of manuscript laid out all over my floor to get a feel for its flow. (Stravinsky did this, apparently.) I hadn’t got it right. The first scene was over-long and I remember saying to Andrew after our first run-through that we should simply cut it. 

So this is how I remember Andrew Sinclair: the most sensitive of artists, fun and intelligent to work with, but also a man of steel. In no way would he consider this cut, or a cut of any kind. “But I’m the composer”, I pleaded. “It’s my piece!” “Well, you should have more confidence in yourself, Ed. Cut it, and my name’s removed from the production.” (Or words to that effect). I had no choice; the music remained complete and Caedmon perished late one summer’s night in a sweltering Donmar Warehouse.

My two musical influences at that time had been Tippett and Ligeti. They may sound like strange bedfellows, but I admired Tippett’s free-rein imagination and I liked Ligeti’s technique in the way he strung notes together (apart from other things). My music, then, largely consisted of cluster-type sounds revolving around a note-centre which unravel to form chords. I believe now, and I believed then, that this kind of bi-polarity between dissonance and consonance is good for opera: it sets up a dynamic which is inherently dramatic. But the musical world was stylistically very self-conscious in those days. You were no good if you weren’t ‘modern’. One reviewer remarked that the music of Caedmon was influenced by Britten and Birtwistle (not too far off the mark) while another condemned it as being ‘out-of-date 80 years ago’. (How can two people hear so differently?) I’m not sure that anyone ‘got’ that Caedmon’s party scene was a medieval mock-up, The Widow sang a "Celtic folk-song" and the Abbess’s scene was a "renaissance motet". I guarantee that if Caedmon were revived in today's more eclectic era, stylistic cohesion would be the last thing on anyone’s mind. And yes, I subsequently revised the first scene, cutting it quite drastically.

No praise can be too high for Wilfred Judd’s and Kenneth Richardson’s initiative back in the 1980’s. Against all the odds, they got The Garden Venture off the ground, even though it soon became flightless under its own weight. There were two or three more incarnations of the festival and many composers, writers, creatives and performers were given valuable opportunities. In my case, Christopher Gillett, who sang the role of Caedmon, went on to enjoy a long and successful international career - as, of course, did Andrew.

It wasn’t until 25 years later that I re-surfaced as an opera composer: getting older, I had to get on with what I needed to do. Besides, the ideas started to come thick and fast, starting with Pirandello’s Six Characters, dramas by Lorca and collaborations with Norman Welch, Max Waller, Leo Doulton and, as I write, Christine Aziz. Meanwhile, the mantle of The Garden Venture has been taken over more successfully by Tête-à-Tête: The Opera Festival whose model is also more appropriate financially: visiting groups and companies provide the productions and how they pay for them is their business. Sure, artists are not paid well, if at all, and standards are variable; but the festival provides a sketch-pad for creatives to have a go, which is exactly what was needed in 1989.

So often, musical documentaries turn into a gushing frenzy of personality-back-scrubbing, even if the subjects are dead, whereas this portrait of a little-known pioneering composer brought her and her talents realistically to life and gave much food for thought.. A musician and a Cambridge mathematician, Delia Derbyshire succeeded in joining the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and became the creative producer behind many startling sound effects and theme tunes on TV and radio for the next ten years, most notably, of course, for Doctor Who. The Radiophonic Workshop was regarded as the nadir of the BBC  - its occupants weren't 'composers' but technical assistants - and I wondered why she didn't escape instead to Paris, a centre of electronic music at the time, since she was bilingual too.

In 1967 I was a teenager and interested in electronics and the crossover between science and music. My school was enrolled on a trial A-level scheme called 'physical science' (counting as two A-levels!) and as a major part of the course, we were to develop a project on our own initiative: my subject was musical synthesis. On the back of this, I arranged a 'research' visit to the Radiophonic Workshop and met Desmond Briscoe, its head. Deciding against an immediate career at the BBC (aged 16, I was offered a traineeship) I went on to Oxford where acoustics became the special subject for my degree.

The documentary brought this period back to me and I realised I could identify with Delia Derbyshire in one major respect: as the technology improved, musical synthesis became less intuitive, more technical and eventually, of course, computer-driven. Derbyshire's creativity, it seemed, emerged out of the limitations of tape manipulation and I reflected that 'primitive' methods can achieve sophisticated results.. A comparison of her original Doctor Who theme tune with a later re-make by others using more 'advanced' synthesis illustrated the point convincingly. Faced with an ever-expanding palette of hardware, she lost heart and left London. It must have been at around the same time that I visited the computer music department in Aarhus where transformations by then could be processed in real time. But I remember thinking "so what?"

Self-evidently, these processes opened up new worlds of sonic possibilities. But I soon saw that this kind of exploration for its own sake didn't appeal to me, nor did new sounds necessarily result in interesting music. On the contrary, it's the comparatively finite possibilities of musical instruments and the voice which yield more complex and nuanced sounds, especially in live performance. 

Against all the odds, Derbyshire succeeded in breaking into the men's world of the 60's and her achievements deserve this belated recognition. But her tragedy is that in the 70's and 80's the world of musical composition was dominated by the cliques of the (still male dominated) ultra-cerebral avant-garde leaving more intuitive creators out in the cold. I could well imagine how Derbyshire became disillusioned and sought solace elsewhere.

Lorca and his works fascinate me; this is the fifth project I've based on his works.  Several years ago, a friend suggested I take a look at them. He had in mind Blood Wedding and the other tragedies that have established Lorca as one of the world's great dramatists. But I came across some unfinished or fragmentary, experimental works which appealed to me more. Besides which, it felt less predatory to use them since they are rarely performed and I could give them a voice, so to speak. These works are poetic and imaginative and uncover new theatrical territory in a unique way. When he was put in charge of La Barraca, a touring theatre company, in the 1930's, the works that he created for it became more focussed and direct: they had to be, both for audiences' and actors' sakes. The lesser-known works include 'impossible' plays in which, one might say, imagination triumphs over practicalities. Así que pasen cinco años belongs to this category. It follows in the wake of Dali and Bunuel who, in 1929, had collaborated on Le Chien Andalou, the first surrealist movie. Doubtless, the poet wanted to transfer the free-association dreamworld of surrealism to the theatre, something that's very hard, however, to achieve without the use of cinematic techniques. The play exists in Lorca's first draft dated 19 August 1931. A consequent read-through of the play apparently left the participants bewildered and confused but Lorca would surely have revised the work considerably if he had gone on to produce and perform it.

While the opera retains the storyline and most of the characters of the play, it's considerably shorter and the acts are rearranged to create what for my purposes would be a more dramatic structure, distributing the strands among twelve scenes. Among the character list, there are a Dead Cat and a Dead Child. This pair has a touching conversation about what it was like to die. They discuss their brief lives while alive and their fear of the afterlife now they're dead. There's also a Mannequin who's displaying the wedding dress that is pining to be worn but destined to remain unused. I've cast this for two sopranos manipulating a doll or a puppet. They double as the Cat & Child which I suppose will be puppets too. The last of the disembodied characters is a Mask which raises the question: how to perform a persona without a body? She appears to be the remnants of an Italian Countess suffering from multiple delusions. When she describes the Paris Opera has having 'terraces going down to the sea', we know she's confused at best or, most likely, making it up. But so is the author.

The young man, the poet - I've called him Federico - addresses the audience: he fears that it's unfashionable to create poetic drama; he wonders why his countrymen celebrate death more than birth and finally, at the end of the opera, he explains to the audience that he was murdered and his body was never found. He's taking part in the drama he's made but he's outside it too. He tolerates three friends who are aspects of himself. Fernando is an older man, a father figure, rather cynical, he's something of a philosopher. He encourages Federico to live for himself. If Fernando represents the past, Juan, whose only thoughts are for his amorous appetites, represents the present. Pedro, on the other hand, is sensitive and morbid, preoccupied with the future. Federico himself is lost in a world of books and dreams; the woman he's supposed to love is only an ideal to him. He puts off the wedding for five years by which time his fiancée, Belisa, has  another lover and cancels the engagement - much to the dismay of the Mannequin. Rosita is Federico's repressed assistant (Lorca calls her a typist) and loves him deeply. But he's too blind to notice and in Scene 6 she leaves his employment, upset at being ignored. On her travels she falls under the protection of the Mask; their scene together I've set in Venice, the home of masquerade, accompanied by watery, gondola music (whatever that is). Belisa, who is all about her body, and the Mask, whose glamour exists only in its mind, are played by the same singer; the Mask might represent what Belisa becomes in middle age, lonely and eccentric, a shadow of her former voluptuous self. 

With difficulty Federico charts a course between his friends who all disappoint him in one way or another and the two women who are disappointed by him. While Belisa pursues other men, Rosita waits patiently. When he finally catches up with her, she makes him wait five years in turn. Life is short, 'love doesn't wait', and this fairy tale doesn't end happily. "You have no eyes to see me naked", she says, referring to his homosexuality. On his journey, lost in the forest, Federico meets three clowns from a circus or (as I prefer) players from the commedia dell'arte (Venice again). In their scenes they confuse the theatrical illusion by introducing a stage-within-a-stage, a second theatre. It's as if they're telling us: it's all a performance. Collectively, they're like a bunch of Shakespearean fools who seem to know a lot more than they're prepared to admit to and who sing sad and funny songs of mysterious things.  

The play is ultimately about failure. The wedding dress fails to be worn, the three friends fail to break out of their compartmentalised lives, Federico fails in his relationships and the women fail to have children. Only the innocent Child and Cat enjoyed their past lives wandering in the woods and when they cry 'we don't want to be buried' they dance a boogie as if to say: 'always look on the bright side of death'. But if all this sounds grim, the drama still manages to smile, largely by virtue of the language which places the action in a never-never land of nightingales, dawns, mountain-tops, clouds, rivers, oceans, mirrors, breezes, flowers and moons. It's timeless, but the time always seems to be six o'clock.  From Renaissance polyphony to music hall burlesque, I've thrown everything at the music to give it the feel of a big musical dream (or nightmare, depending on taste). There's even a (deeply unfashionable) overture; just not at the beginning.

Of course, Lorca couldn't know in 1931 that five years later - to the day - he'd be murdered by a Falangist militia at the start of the civil war. I've incorporated this tragedy in the ending of the opera. To the cry of Viva la muerte! (the battle cry of the Fascist Legionarios) the three friends reappear and shoot Federico dead. This happens at the same time as the Dead Cat and Dead Child meet their ultimate, post-mortem fate which is to be carried away by a giant hand, 'the hand of God'. Perhaps the afterlife isn't so bad after all. 

I'm now looking for a director who can meet these challenges. It would make a great opera film, (special effects anyone?) Currently theatrical life is in abeyance, of course: perhaps things will have improved in five years' time. 

Did I mean it should have the strong, traditional emotions of passion, destiny and conflicts of loyalty that characterise the tradition of opera seria? If so, Wilde's drama has all these in abundance. It's been described as Shakespearean or Jacobean, but actually it could have been written as an opera libretto in the style of Verdi operas then going the rounds. Despite its 16th century setting, I soon realised its contemporary relevance for Wilde, and also for us today. 

Wilde's text is very long and very dense. There are a host of minor characters too, well suited to small parts within an operatic chorus. (sic) It was a labour of love to reduce it to something I could set. Although I'd wanted to write an Italian style opera, grand opera, or an imitation of it, was not what I was aiming for - quite the opposite. I wanted my audience close-up, and for practical and financial reasons I needed a small cast and a chamber accompaniment. I remembered the Victorians liked their parlour entertainments, and so decided on a piano duet, four hands at one instrument, as a throwback. Out went all the small parts, but in their place I developed the idea that the cast would also form their own mini-chorus and, in the absence of any sets, describe the settings and even the action rather than show either with any realism. This will provide a challenge for any director.

​More of a challenge at the moment is to determine what production and where, if any, is possible during the pandemic.

Eventually, I remembered the nostalgia of The Good Old Days and thought of music-hall characters populating the stage. Two 'cockney' clowns come across a 'posh' self-isolating Queen, who invites them into her sordid bunker to party. Coming across Emily Thorner, a soprano with ultra-high notes - and then finding she was moving from Germany to London - completed the 'picture' for me. The score became a succession of song & dance numbers with - and this was the lucky break - an accordion for the accompaniment. 

Discussions went on with Bill Bankes-Jones, Artistic Director of Tête à Tête, for many weeks with regard to its possible appearance in their festival this year. Would theatres be allowed to open? Would they be able to host live performance? It all looked very bleak, and so I was delighted when Korina Kokkali and Simon Gleave took on the project to make a film. Not a video of a performance, but an experimental art-movie directed by Adrian Ardelean. 

We had a blast of a week in August, taking over a derelict warehouse in Lambeth known previously as The Workshop. It had been a huge garage servicing the London Fire Brigade (their headquarters?) but had long since been abandoned, though a small artists' colony had made use of some of the spaces. Rainwater ingress was evident; we got wet feet. Having got behind on the schedule, we caught up on the final day and even finished a few minutes early. It was all so intense that, driving home, I had that rare feeling I’d been away for months rather than days.

It would have been nothing without Charlie Wood’s sets and costumes, and Layla Bradbeer's generous assistance. They worked night and day to create a spectacle out of bin liners, loo paper, cans (of mushrooms, apparently), a toilet pan (where did that come from?), pallets and newspaper. The centrepiece was a bath, found on site somewhere. This really was street art as set design, but detailed and meaningful. Simon’s staging and Korina’s choreography made the show by turns serious, tragic and very funny. The cast and music department were tireless, on set and performing for nearly 10 hours a day. Emily, Gráinne and Simon were stars and looked fab too, with Charlie and Layla spending 40+ minutes on each doing make-up.

The music? Well, it was un-sophisticated, not very original and won’t challenge an audience too much. But hey! it did the job, allowed the voices to shine and gave the piece the character of folk and vaudeville. The accordion was  great, really supported the voices, giving an orchestral attack just when you want it. Unable, it seemed, to play a note wrong all week, Ilona’s musicianship and concentration is a rare thing, and we were very fortunate to have her on board.

Not leastly, the opera hangs on a guest appearance by a child. Enter the effervescent 6 year old Henry Clements, whose only reward for learning his song was a box of Lego. Thanks Helen Clements!

Meanwhile, the live performances at The Cockpit were given the go-ahead and we appeared to perform a concert, but costumed, version a couple of weeks later. (16 September 2020)

Words - Leo Doulton
Music - Edward Lambert
Queen - Emily Thorner (soprano)
Squib - Gráinne Gillis (mezzo-soprano)
Lissa - Simon Grange (bass)
Dark One - Henry Clements
Accordion - Ilona Suomalainen
Musical Director - Elspeth Wilkes
Design - Charlie Wood
Production Assistant - Layla Bradbeer
Stage Director - Simon Gleave
Movement Director - Korina Kokkali
Film makers:
Sound - Malcolm Cromie
Boom - Ben Gandy
Lighting - Sonny Ray Casson
Producer - Katie Gunn
Director - Adrian-Florin Ardelean