Speed Dating

Last night I went speed-dating, musical speed-dating; well operatic really. The event was organised by Bill Bankes-Jones and the enterprising Tete-a-tete opera company, who regularly produce new and exciting operas. The event was by way of an experiment as the company would like to launch a new space for people to come together to experiment with and create new opera. So, last night some 60 odd composers, librettists, designers, directors and musicians came together to meet each other. The speed-dating, rather complex to put together, enabled people to meet like minded souls for a brief chat. So I was able to spend time with a succession of librettists and directors, all very useful as I am hoping to find a new operatic project.

In the spare bits of time (!) various composers and librettists got together to create 2 scratch operas based on brief scenarios. Everyone writing 1 short scene. The results were sung at the end of the evening, the musicians and singers managing to brilliantly incarnate their roles based on minimal rehearsal and using sketchy photocopies of scrawled manuscript. It made an exciting and fun end to a profitable (and entertaining evening).