OperaGenesis Projects

Varjak Paw

One of the highlights of the spring programme has been the continuing work in partnership with The Opera Group on the new opera Varjak Paw, by composer Julian Philips and writer Kit Hesketh Harvey (of ‘Kit and the Widow’). Workshops during March 2008 culminated in a showcase performance of scenes from the opera to an invited audience at the Jerwood Space. This was followed by a question and answer session with Julian and Kit, and a chance to see the set model for the world premiere production.

Two fascinating aspects of this project are the casting, which combines opera and music-theatre voices in a seamless and accessible vocal world (one of the highlights of the show The Enchanted Pig at the Young Vic in 2006-07), and also Julian Philips’ ability to improvise around his written music as the singers try out scenes.

Varjak Paw’s world premiere will be at the Linbury Theatre in October 2008. Booking information will be posted.

Stuck On A Sunday

This surreal music-theatre comedy – a kind of ‘Edward Scissorhands meets the Marx Brothers in a 1950s semi’ – has experimented with dance elements as well as extraordinary electronic voice treatments.

Composer Marc Teitler (National Theatre) and writer/director Timothy Walker have created a unique sound- and theatrical world (reminiscent of the drawings of Edward Gorey). The project has also involved contact with the National Thetre studio, since it’s perhaps more music-theatre than opera (although they look at it as being more operatic than music-theatre).

It is envisaged that the next stage of development will be a CD recording of excerpts, which the team hope to make in the quest for a commercial producer.

Muybridge - “Unsupported Transit”

This project is a cross-genre video opera. OperaGenesis has been working in partnership with Opera North’s Dominic Gray to develop this piece about photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge. After initial work at the ROH in early 2007, the project has been rehearsing in Leeds, and a fully staged studio version of the latest draft was performed to an invited audience in Opera North’s the new studio theatre in November.

The project is fascinating for its simultaneous and integrated use of live singers, chamber ensemble and video cameras.  At present OperaGenesis is discussing with Opera North revisions sto the work to create a more compact, accessible version for performance. It is also possible that the piece might have a future directly to screen as a short TV opera (the writer and composer both having worked extensively in television), or even as a radio opera (on the model of Dominic Muldowney’s Red Razzamatazz, a Radio 3 commission).

EDSA

Will Todd and Ben Dunwell have continued trying out new angles on their project to create a Philippines political music-theatre thriller. They have concentrated especially on the acoustic demands of trying to incorporate jazz instrumentation with amplified and non-amplified voices. They’ve also been refining the broad, sprawling structure of the work (which became apparent in early workshops) into a story line which is much tighter and more direct.

The focus is now more on the assassination of Ninoy Aquino as an existential thriller, with the mean streets of Manila forming a background canvas. Previously it was more about Imelda Marcos’ obsession with shoes!

Alzheimer’s project (‘Wild World’)

OperaGenesis is involved in continuing work with The Opera Group. As part of this, there will be further development of Elena Langer and poet Glyn Maxwell’s short opera which uses music as a medium to tackle the subject of Alzheimer’s disease. Two successful films of the past few years - The Notebook and  Away from Her - indicate how relevant this subject is.

The short version of this opera has already won a Swiss competition, and will be premiered in Zurich on 25th January 2009.

OperaGenesis will engage in workshops to help develop a full-length version of the piece, for possible performance by The Opera Group timed to coincide with a major international Alzheimer’s conference in London in Spring 2010.

One of the fascinating aspects of this project is the direct involvement of scientists and patients. These have been – and will be – brought in at different stages of the project’s development. Since musical memory is one of the last areas of mental activity to deteriorate with the disease, it is especially appropriate to explore the subject in an opera.

Moon On A Stick

This wonderfully witty music-theatre piece is derived from an H.G. Wells story about time travel. It has already received an extremely polished presentation at the Jerwood Space.

Beautifully paced and structured, it blends philosophy and pastiche effortlessly into a strangely moving contemporary love story (which starts in a call centre selling pet insurance!).

Immediate and accessible, OperaGenesis is anxious to try and find a performance home for this piece as it’s really ready for an audience now. OperaGenesis is beginning to talk to possible partners, and may be able to show some scenes in ROH2’s forthcoming ‘Scratch Nights’ series (starting Spring 2009), where new and experimental work will be performed in a cabaret setting in the Linbury Theatre.

Dalston Songs

Helen Chadwick’s piece, originated entirely through the development and support of OperaGenesis has now been fully commissioned by ROH2 and is featured as the whole of page 3 in the recent ROH Berliner magazine. OperaGenesis is delighted that ideas which began literally on the back of envelopes in a ballet studio two years ago are finally building towards a full-length piece. Helen has also benefited hugely from the production input of collaborators including director/choreographer Steve Hoggett and Linbury Prize-winning designer Miriam Büther.

The World Premiere took place on 1st May 2008 in the Linbury Studio with a further performance on the 3rd of May. It is hoped there will be further performances.

Arlene Sierra – the Female Faust

Arlene is a very recent recruit to OperaGenesis – a rising star of the Anglo-American scene, she has just won the prestigious Charles Ives fellowship. She is beginning work with OperaGenesis and the acclaimed Austrian/Australian director Beverly Blankenship on a female version of the Faust story, Faustine, derived from the novel by Emma Tennant.

OperaGenesis took advantage of the ROH’s existing Monday concert series to introduce some music by Arlene Sierra to a London audience for the first time: a mixed programme of vocal and instrumental chamber music was very well received in the Crush Room on 3rd December 2007.

The first dramaturgical meetings for Faustine will take place in June 2008 at ROH.

Joseph Phibbs – a new recruit

Another ‘new recruit’ is Joseph Phibbs, another rising star of the UK music world, with several major orchestral commissions to his credit. He is working on a version of the Malcolm Lowry novel Under The Volcano, which, with its themes of repressed emotion and alcoholism on the Mexican Day of the Dead. OperaGenesis believe that this novel is a good source for very strong operatic material. OperaGenesis has already spent several months on dramaturgical planning and discussion, and work will begin on a revised draft of the libretto soon.

Heart of Darkness – Tarik O’Regan and Tom Phillips

OperaGenesis has been planning and casting for a major summer showing: Tarik O’Regan and Tom Phillips’ opera Heart of Darkness, based on the Conrad novel.

This has been a joint project (we hope the first of many) with a parallel organisation in the US: American Opera Projects, who work-shopped parts of the opera last year.

On Friday August 8th, OperaGenesis will be showing a semi-staged showcase of the finished opera in the Linbury Theatre, directed by Cheek By Jowl’s Edward Dick, conducted by Oliver Gooch (late of the ROH Jette Parker Young Artists’ Programme), and designed by the acclaimed visual artist Tom Phillips.

Cocteau in the Underworld – Ed Hughes & Roger Morris

As long-term admirers of Ed Hughes first opera The Birds, which won the Gresham Prize in 2004 and was profiled on Radio 3, the team at OperaGenesis is delighted to be working with Ed on his second major opera project.

This is a visionary operatic translation of Jean Cocteau into the middle of his own best-known story Orpheus in the Underworld. In this opera, Cocteau struggles with a creative block while grieving about the death of his young lover, until Orpheus offers him a possible way to cheat death. But the price may be too great for an artist to pay…

The opera has been commissioned by the Brighton Festival and initial dramaturgical meetings with John Lloyd Davies of OperaGenesis have been very interesting and productive.

Workshops with singers will follow in the summer, and performances in Brighton are planned for May 2009, to be directed by ROH Jette Parker young director Thomas Guthrie.