Onto a small stage, a jagged piece of wall with a gothic window to one side, and a raised, curtained platform on the other, walks Charles Dickens. He tells us – in his own voice, lifted virtually verbatim from the opening of The Old Curiosity Shop – of his nightly walks through the London streets,…
“A merman was caught at Orford in the thirteenth century, and kept for some time; he could not be induced to take an interest in the services of the church, nor indeed to speak; eventually he escaped. The authority is Ralph of Coggeshall.” This succinct account of the legend of the Wildman of Orford, by…
Bungay boasts several natural blessings when it comes to the arts. The town itself is of storybook prettiness; its Georgian theatre, sensitively restored in recent years, still has some original features excitingly intact from 1828: and Bungay’s ruined castle, meanwhile, dates back to 1173. Once the stronghold of Hugh Bigod, that rebellious Earl eventually had…
Even ruthless, psychotic gangsters have to fall in love sometimes. And Rodelinda is all about what happens when the people at the top of the cruel power pyramid have got their minds on… other things, like other people’s faithful wives, as well as their crime kingdoms. Director Richard Jones translates Rodelinda’s setting (originally 7th century Lombardy) to gangster warfare…
It all started with a tweet: in October 2011, Genevieve Raghu realised she had just missed Patrick Hawes’ concert in Norwich the previous week, and tweeted the composer to ask how it had gone. Their subsequent conversation led to a meeting, which led to a sharing of ideas, and six years later Raghu and Hawes…
In Norfolk, we tend to be quietly, fondly proud of our surroundings – with an emphasis on ‘quietly.’ The tradition of Norfolk understatement is legendary, rivalled only by our keen attachment to the smooth horizons and vast skies which dominate our severe rural landscape. Accordingly, it shouldn’t have surprised me (as a local) that I…
Although opera is traditionally associated with grand narrative structures, sometimes its heightened psychological intensity can be remarkably effective at drawing us into an intimate historical moment, and just keeping us there a little while. Schutzwall tells the story of two sisters – Angelika Meyer (Mimi Doulton) and Suzanne Meyer (Ella Taylor) – suddenly separated by…
We gather in a RADA basement to find two double rows of chairs facing one another across a long, thin central space; the layout faintly recalls a train carriage, the environment in which Belongings was first designed to be performed. The premiere of this opera was, in fact, on the Caledonian Sleeper (one of my…
Not many operas credit their Neural Network Programming: but ‘i’ – The Opera, though recognisably and confidently an opera, thanks Janelle Shane and Dr Amita Kapoor of the University of California, San Diego, for that contribution. The opera tells of the creation of an android girl, a birthday present for a spoilt Princess in a…
The Winter’s Tale is surely one of Shakespeare’s cruellest tragedies: Leontes’ mistaken, yet unshakeable jealousy destroys family bonds and friendships alike, culminating in blasphemy as he refuses to accept the Oracle of Apollo which exonerates his blameless wife. Even the eventual restoration of his wife and daughter, an earthly miracle achieved only by the courage…