Tête à Tête Short Operas on Genesis

The Genesis Foundation supported the music theatre company Tête à Tête on its Blind Date Tour during the Autumn of 2007. The main purpose of Genesis is to work with Tête à Tête on audience development in the field of innovative, contemporary opera. The six short operas from that tour are now available to watch.

Genesis has recently appointed Bill Bankes-Jones, Tête à Tête’s imaginative artistic director, to direct the opera version of Ionesco’s play, La Cantatrice Chauve, which is being written by French composer Jean-Philippe Calvin. Workshopped as part of the OperaGenesis programme at the Royal Opera House, the world premiere of La Cantatrice is due to take place in Paris in 2009.

John Studzinski, Founder and Chairman of the Genesis Foundation, says: “I have been impressed for some time by the brilliant and innovative marketing approaches of Bill Bankes-Jones and his team as well as by the quality of their productions. We are delighted to be adding Tête à Tête to our roster of partners.”

Anger

Words: Meredith Oakes Music: Julian Grant

Soprano: Stephanie Corley
Critic 1: Susan Atherton
Critic 2: Damian Thantrey

Two opera critics eulogise about the beautiful performance of a diva. However their agreement is short lived and their disagreement destroys the performance..

Anger was originally presented as part of The Seven Deadly Sins, a private performance of 7 short operas given in 1993 as a leaving present for the retiring English National Opera management (Peter Jonas, Mark Elder, David Pountney, Edmund Tracey.) Engineered by Henrietta Bredin, and directed by Bill Bankes-Jones this involved all kinds of skullduggery and secret rehearsals with the ENO stars of the time. Anger has never before had a public performance.

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On Such a Day

Words: Philip Ridley Music: Anna Meredith

It is a beautiful day...
It is not...
It is...

on such a day tells the story of a day as it unfolds though the eyes of our performers.

Initially the beauty of the day is admired, however as events, as yet unknown, unfold we witness the reactions of those present and follow them through the storm to the calm that follows.

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The Feathered Friend

Words: Alasdair Middleton Music: Helen Chadwick

Polly: Stephanie Corley
Suzy: Susan Atherton
Harry: Damian Thantrey

Based on a true story that occurred in Leeds last year, The Feathered Friend exposes a Love Triangle between a man, a woman and a parrot. Whilst Harry has been away, his girlfriend has been seeing someone else, although Harry is blissfully unaware until his parrot opens its mouth.

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The Big But

Words: Jonzi-D Music: Jason Yarde

Suz-O: Susan Atherton
Nigel Ian St Thomas: Damian Thantrey
Linda Moran: Stephanie Corley

The Big But is a humorous look at the devious world of celebrity PR. In a world where the term celebrity has becoming increasingly meaningless and the paparazzi and press chase the latest and greatest misdemeanours perpetrated by people in the public eye, The Big But follows the story of George Michael's secret love child. Potentially the scoop of the century we watch as the vultures descend on their prey.

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Houses

Words: Christopher Mayo & Christopher Crebolder
Music: Christopher Mayo

Houses traces the story of three homes in Toronto from their construction, years ago, to the present day. Unearthing the lives lived, the stories trapped within the bricks and interweaving fragments of past, present and future, Houses is based facts dug out of the Canadian archives by Christopher Mayo and subsequently pieced together.

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Nyanyushka

Words: Simon Nicholson
Music: Gary Carpenter

Kirov: Damian Thantrey
Olga Tomsk: Stephanie Corley
Maria Popinova: Susan Atherton

Nyanyushka tells the story of a man, left to fend for himself in post revolution Russia, who yearns for the care of his Nyanushka once again.

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Simon Nicholson writes:

"I'd read about the peasant nannies of Tsarist Russia some time ago. Adored by the noble children they suckled and reared, they were nonetheless servants: penniless, illiterate women who usually lived out their entire lives on the estate on which they were born. When Gary approached me about the project, I remembered this material, and for some reason found myself wondering what might have happened to these women after the 1917 revolution. I thought up a story. It had the somewhat grotesque tone of some early Soviet writers (Mayakovsky, Bulgakov, Erdman) and that provided a good clue for how to write the libretto. A lthough it proved impossible to resist references to a certain 1960's musical film as well..."

Gary Carpenter writes:

"My references arrived with Simon's libretto. Set at a time when the influence of Diaghilev's coterie of disaffected Russian emigrés was still felt everywhere except Russia, I tinkered around the edges of Mussorgsky and early Stravinsky. In the spirit of the piece, I confess to one quotation."