Tete a Tete

The Tête à Tête opera company, which has received support this year from the Genesis Foundation, is presenting the classic musical Salad Days, by Julian Slade, at Hammersmith's Riverside Studios from 12th to 22nd November. Tête à Tête's founder, Bill Bankes-Jones, will direct the show, for which the Riverside Studios will be transformed "into a magical park" where audiences can "savour the delicious comedy, singing and breathtaking dancing from a café table, in a conventional seat at the theat

“Tête à Tête continues to extend the barriers of what is operatically possible often with very entertaining results"

The Daily Telegraph, December

The annual Tête À Tête Opera Festival will run this year at the Riverside Studios in London from 30 July to 16 August. There will be six different performances a night. If you want to experience the cutting edge of opera and be in on the growth of the most innovative and refreshing developments of the art form; if you want to participate, become involved, write a short opera or simply sit back and enjoy the unexpected with a like-minded audience, then come along to the place where the field of what is operatically possible is being expanded in all directions.

In the past two years, Genesis has funded Tête à Tête.  This has enabled them to fulfil the following projects:

·       Blind Date, 2007 –London première and national tour of six new operas

·       Tête à Tête: the Opera Festival - Riverside Studios, in both 2007 and 2008

·       The Cumnor Affair: An Elizabethan Murder-Mystery, November 2008

The Genesis Foundation was to have supported a London production in November 2009 of the new opera that it commissioned from Jean-Philippe Calvin based on the iconic French play by Eugene Ionesco, La Cantatrice Chauve. The production was being developed by the company Tête à Tête.

However, a situation has arisen which has driven Genesis to the conclusion that it is simply too financially risky at this stage and in the current economic climate to continue to support this production.

Due to various contractual complications, the Genesis Foundation has decided reluctantly that it must withdraw its support from Tête à Tête’s proposed November production at the Riverside Studios in London of the Genesis-commissioned opera The Bald Soprano (La Cantatrice Chauve) by Jean-Philippe Calvin. A French production of La Cantatrice is still being performed in Paris from 30 April to 3 May 2009.

Press Release...

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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.

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