Second Movement's Rough for Opera returned to the Cockpit Theatre yesterday (14 May 2019) for its seventeenth edition. Billed as a scratch night for new opera, the event gives composers, librettists and creators the chance to try work out in front of an audience and then get feedback, each performance being followed by a Q&A session.
Yesterday we heard three works in progress. Excerpts from Speak Red by Santa Buss & FXXX BXXXXX presented by Oedipa with Alice Purton (vocals/cello), Heloise Werner (vocals/cello) and participants from UCL's Division of Psychology and Language Sciences and Communication Clinic. A Father is Looking for his Daughter by Alex Mills and Gareth Mattey with Ella Taylor (father), Rosie Middleton (Auditor), Cecilia Bignall (cello), Calum Huggan & Angela Wai-Nok Hui (percussion), Crispin Lord (director), and Ashil Mistry (conductor). Dreaming Clouds by Alex Ho (composer, co-director, performer) and Julia Cheng (choreographer, co-director, performer).
The company performing Speak Red included 15 people with aphasia, the difficulty with language and communication which can occur after a stroke. The piece was a work in progress, and we heard three scenes, in which the participants' powerful individual stories were combined with that of Ruby McDonough, an American woman whose fight against discrimination in the USA changed the way the law works. There was some strikingly imaginative moments, in a piece which used opera and music theatre to present ideas about the difficulties of non-communication, rising to the challenge of being inclusive whilst creating a work of dramatic interest.
A Father is Looking for his Daughter was, at first hearing, the most finished piece of the evening. A stand alone operatic scene, it had in fact been created in a relatively short period by composer Alex Mills [who wrote Dear Marie Stopes, see my review] and librettist Gareth Mattey, and the performance enabled them to consider how the piece might develop, whether it is stand-alone or not. Dealing with issues of identity, borders and parenthood, the work reacted to the stories about recent separations between parents and children on the USA/Mexico border, yet also had at its heart the chilling way the auditor (Rosie Middleton) was redacting out all reference to the father's (Ella Taylor) being transgender.
The final work, Dreaming Clouds, was the first collaboration between Alex Ho and Julia Cheng, both are second generation Chinese immigrants and the work explored the borders between their Chinese heritage, notably Cantonese Opera, and Western culture. It was a strikingly visual piece, with Julia Cheng's choreography being a powerful and visually entrancing feature of the work.
Tuesday 14 May 2019
Rough for Opera - Speak Red, A Father is Looking for his Daughter, Dreaming Clouds
Labels:
opera review
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts this month
-
Septura I first became aware of the brass septet, Septura , when noting their 2017/18 concert series Kleptomania at St John's Smith...
-
Bach: Brandenburg Concertos - title page Six Concerts avec plusieurs instruments: Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann; London Handel Players, director ...
-
Retrospect Opera's recording of Stanford's Shamus O'Brien in rehearsal Charles Villiers Stanford’s opera Shamus O'Brien pre...
-
Stravinsky: The Rake's Progess - Act Three, scene one: the graveyard Frederick Jones, Jerome Knox - English Touring Opera (Photo: © Ric...
-
Rediscovering her Polish musical roots: Jennifer Pike on the personal connections in her latest discJennifer Pike (Photo Arno) With her latest recording, violinist Jennifer Pike has been rediscovering her Polish roots. The Polish Violi...
-
Poster for the première of Léo Delibes' Lakmé Léo Delibes: Lakmé; Haegee Lee, Elgan Llŷr Thomas, James Platt, Julien Van Mellaerts,...
-
Stephen McNeff: A Star Next to the Moon - Jacob Harrison (Pedro Páramo) - Guildhall School of Music & Drama (Photo: David Monteith-Hodg...
-
Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra I get all sorts of mail, people sending my information on concerts and recordings. Everything gets gl...
-
The Afghan Youth Orchestra On Thursday 7 March 2024, the Afghan Youth Orchestra makes its debut at the Southbank Centre at the start of its ...
-
Jonathan Dove: The Enchanted Pig - Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, 2023 (Photo Greg Milner) On Monday 29 February 2024, the Royal Birmingha...
No comments:
Post a Comment