Hospital Passion Play: New opera for those recovering from life changing injuries and conditions

Orlando Gough's new opera Hospital Passion Play is being presented at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Saturday 14 October in a collaboration between Garsington Opera and Rosetta Life (note the event is sold out). The piece addresses issues of recovery from life changing injuries and conditions. It stories of rehabilitation, from those who have had a brain or spinal injury, into a new opera which is being performed by seventy performers, including a choir of twenty stroke survivors and the Garsington Adult Community Chorus plus films of intimate performances from the Stoke Mandeville National Spinal Injuries Centre and hospitals from across London. 

The opera is directed by Karen Gillingham, Creative Director of Garsington Opera Learning and Participation and led by Lucinda Jarrett. The concert is part of health charity Rosetta Life’s three-year arts-into-health intervention Stroke Odysseys. It is part of a series of opera performances at the V&A, designed to bring opera to a wider audience and to coincide with the V&A exhibition Opera: Passion, Power and Politics (30 September 2017 – 25 February 2018).


The choir is formed from the Lambeth Stroke Choir, Shout at Cancer choir (a vocal group that helps throat cancer patients who now have no voice box) and the Garsington Adult Community Chorus. Filmed movement and song scenes performed by people accessing spinal and neurological rehabilitation, supported by professional singers, musicians and dancers, will be integrated into the performance. These films are being prepared through workshops exploring identity after traumatic injury at Stoke Mandeville National Spinal Injuries Centre and neuro-rehabilitation units of London hospitals.

Working with South London’s stroke community, Rosetta Life has created Stroke Odysseys, a music and movement performance arts intervention, that improves the quality of life and sense of well-being of those affected by traumatic brain injury such as stroke. Hospital patients who have had a traumatic brain injury experience the severe loss of confidence and self-esteem that comes with an altered capacity to move, speak and express themselves.

Further information from the V&A website (note that the event is sold out)