I, Object

Raphaela Papadakis

Rather amazingly, it is over 30 years since the first performance of Michael Nyman's opera The Man who mistook his Wife for a Hat. To celebrate the City Music Foundation (CMF) is presenting Nyman's opera in a double bill with Kate Whitley's Unknown position (from 2011) at the ICA (the venue where Nyman's opera was premiered in 1986) on Thursday 30 November 2017. The CMF is bringing together a group of CMF Artists to form the core group of performers for the operas, which will be directed by Rosalind Parker, and designed by Ana-Sofia Londono. The operas feature soprano Raphaela Papadakis, tenor Nathan Vale, and bass-baritone Joseph Padfield with Mark Biggins conducting the CMF Orchestra.

The double bill will be preceded by a discussion with the panel including the composer Michael Nyman, Christopher Rawlence (librettist of The who mistook his Wife for a Hat), and Professor Jonathan Cole, Consultant in clinical neurophysiology and former colleague of Oliver Sacks on whose work the opera is based.

Nyman’s The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat is adapted from a case study by Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who died last year, concerning events of Dr P, a music professor, who has gradually lost the ability to comprehend or interpret what he sees, a neurological deficit known as ‘visual agnosia’. Kate Whitley’s Unknown Position was inspired by Erika Eiffel, who famously married the Eiffel Tower in a real life example of object sexuality or objectophila. In the libretto, by Emma Hogan, the woman portrayed falls in love with a chair.

Full details from the City Music Foundation website.