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While student singers will understandably be keen to learn roles in ‘classical’ operas, there are advantages for them in performing new, unfamiliar works while in training. They can make such roles their own without regard to tradition or famous exponents. And the music colleges, with a huge amount of free labour at their disposal, may well consider it their duty to champion new opera when the larger houses can ill afford to take those risks. London owes a debt of thanks, therefore, to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama for bringing Missy Mazzoli’s 2018 opera Proving Up to the Milton Court Theatre recently and there was no doubt that the young cast gave it their all and a lot more besides.
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Turning the intimate space of the Croft Hall, Hungerford into a world of magic, The Music Troupe performs Edward Lambert's In Five Years’ Time, a rich feast of poetry, symbolism and mime, where Lamberts music adds and draws out something extra from Federico García Lorca’s words
If you were looking for interesting music theatre, would you look in Hungerford? Perhaps you should, because from time to time Edward Lambert turns up with his company The Music Troupe at the Croft Hall, and turns the intimate space into a world of magic. Never more so than on March 1st when they presented their latest production In Five years Time. It’s based on a surrealist play by Federico García Lorca, whose complex dream-scape, once believed unstageable, Lambert has made into a beautiful precis of moonlit characters who inhabit a past, present and future at any moment.
If you were looking for interesting music theatre, would you look in Hungerford? Perhaps you should, because from time to time Edward Lambert turns up with his company The Music Troupe at the Croft Hall, and turns the intimate space into a world of magic. Never more so than on March 1st when they presented their latest production In Five years Time. It’s based on a surrealist play by Federico García Lorca, whose complex dream-scape, once believed unstageable, Lambert has made into a beautiful precis of moonlit characters who inhabit a past, present and future at any moment.
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I came across advertisements for Ed and Norman’s “The Rapture” on Audition Oracle not long after the vain attempts of Royal Opera House leadership to take a Palestinian flag from dancer Danni Perry at the curtain call of Verdi’s Il Trovatore. Frustrated that dancers, singers and a composer widely renowned for intentionally politically charged works were being forcibly rendered “apolitical” by the leaders of our industry, I couldn’t have come across a more worthy story to be told from our perspective as Westerners in Britain — the empire that brokered Zionist colonisation of Palestine.
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An advert for my new opera The Rapture rejected by the Meta bots. "Bible and Bombs in Palestine - opera".
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A thousand thanks to the steering committee of the fledgling UK Opera Association which opened its doors yesterday to an industry-wide consultation. The UK certainly needs a body that can advocate for opera in the face of ignorance and prejudice about what opera is and can be - and the funding drought that results from that.
Encouraging was the recognition that small companies are playing an important part in the ecosystem, not least in the opportunities they give to singers and creatives, but also in their often innovative approaches to the repertory as well as the places they perform in. I think it could be emphasised, too, that it is in such environments, rather than in the large companies, that most new works are being created, for a fresh repertory is essential if opera is to remain relevant and inclusive.
The online session was, as these events usually are, hijacked by a few loud voices grinding axes; thus, we immediately got a snapshot of the difficulties facing this new organisation, not only in the parlous state of the industry, but also in the marshalling of operatic egos and the pigeon-holing of people according to skin colour or gender. There seemed to be demands for sub-committees to increase representation - i.e. fragmentation - while the Association, surely, needs to bring voices together and to amplify the basic message: OPERA IS GREAT & OPERA IS UNIVERSAL. It can mean all things to all people through the language of music. For heaven’s sake, let’s hope the Association can pull us all together!
Encouraging was the recognition that small companies are playing an important part in the ecosystem, not least in the opportunities they give to singers and creatives, but also in their often innovative approaches to the repertory as well as the places they perform in. I think it could be emphasised, too, that it is in such environments, rather than in the large companies, that most new works are being created, for a fresh repertory is essential if opera is to remain relevant and inclusive.
The online session was, as these events usually are, hijacked by a few loud voices grinding axes; thus, we immediately got a snapshot of the difficulties facing this new organisation, not only in the parlous state of the industry, but also in the marshalling of operatic egos and the pigeon-holing of people according to skin colour or gender. There seemed to be demands for sub-committees to increase representation - i.e. fragmentation - while the Association, surely, needs to bring voices together and to amplify the basic message: OPERA IS GREAT & OPERA IS UNIVERSAL. It can mean all things to all people through the language of music. For heaven’s sake, let’s hope the Association can pull us all together!
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Have had a wonderful variety of operatic experiences recently and, while I’m always interested in the insights that different productions can bring to a work, I can’t help but reflect chiefly on the quality of the music-making and, even more, on how the composer problem-solved, setting text and underlining a drama by means of the singing voice. While not denying the cast and creatives their credit, nothing can redeem a bad score - whereas a good score can suffer if justice isn’t done.
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Programme booklet of first performances:
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Your Editorial "The Guardian view on touring opera: thwarted in its mission to bring music to the people" (10 November) misses a vital point. The trouble with 'opera' is that it’s obsessed with a small canon of works almost exclusively from the 18th and 19th centuries. Exceptions are few and far between, while contemporary works, with their inherent risk, are as rare as hen’s teeth. And so opera isn't just perceived as elitist and expensive (mistakenly) but also as 'uncool' and irrelevant, especially by the young.
Scaled-down versions of those classic favourites don't come anywhere near an authentic experience and touring them has limited effectiveness in growing audiences. Those of us further down the ladder attempting to mount new opera on a very small scale face a huge battle with conservative audiences, limited funding (no encouragement from the Arts Council there) and apathy from colleagues and influencers in the industry: all seem to be stuck in the operatic past. Without a sustained and sustainable renewal of the genre, however, the myth of opera's obsolescence will become a reality. So we need more lithe and nimble regional touring companies which can afford to mount new operas and thereby enhance cultural life more widely - and in more senses than one. It's perhaps the Royal Opera's Linbury Theatre, with its varied offerings of opera and dance, new and old, which could and should plant regional off-shoots. ENO should stay put.
www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/13/its-a-shame-that-opera-remains-stuck-in-the-past
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/10/the-guardian-view-on-touring-opera-thwarted-in-its-mission-to-bring-music-to-the-people?
Scaled-down versions of those classic favourites don't come anywhere near an authentic experience and touring them has limited effectiveness in growing audiences. Those of us further down the ladder attempting to mount new opera on a very small scale face a huge battle with conservative audiences, limited funding (no encouragement from the Arts Council there) and apathy from colleagues and influencers in the industry: all seem to be stuck in the operatic past. Without a sustained and sustainable renewal of the genre, however, the myth of opera's obsolescence will become a reality. So we need more lithe and nimble regional touring companies which can afford to mount new operas and thereby enhance cultural life more widely - and in more senses than one. It's perhaps the Royal Opera's Linbury Theatre, with its varied offerings of opera and dance, new and old, which could and should plant regional off-shoots. ENO should stay put.
www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/13/its-a-shame-that-opera-remains-stuck-in-the-past
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/10/the-guardian-view-on-touring-opera-thwarted-in-its-mission-to-bring-music-to-the-people?
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GELLER INSTITUTE OF AGEING AND MEMORY
Dementia Friendly Opera – The Last Siren
Date: 30th August 2023
Location: Lawrence Hall, St Mary’s Road Campus
by Dr. Andy Northcott, Senior Lecturer in Sociology of Medicine, University of West London
Dementia Friendly Opera is a collaboration between the Geller Institute of Ageing and Memory (GIAM), the London College of Music (LCM) and The Music Troupe. From the performance we hope to develop and refine a toolkit for putting on Dementia Friendly Opera and Dementia Friendly Performance at venues across the country, particularly those underserved by the Arts and for whom attendance at such events would require arduous planning and travel, laying the foundations for work beyond the London College of Music and The Music Troupe, allowing any production to become accessible and dementia friendly.
Dementia Friendly Opera – The Last Siren
Date: 30th August 2023
Location: Lawrence Hall, St Mary’s Road Campus
by Dr. Andy Northcott, Senior Lecturer in Sociology of Medicine, University of West London
Dementia Friendly Opera is a collaboration between the Geller Institute of Ageing and Memory (GIAM), the London College of Music (LCM) and The Music Troupe. From the performance we hope to develop and refine a toolkit for putting on Dementia Friendly Opera and Dementia Friendly Performance at venues across the country, particularly those underserved by the Arts and for whom attendance at such events would require arduous planning and travel, laying the foundations for work beyond the London College of Music and The Music Troupe, allowing any production to become accessible and dementia friendly.