We are collaborating once more with the National Portrait Gallery in the delivery of a series of inspiring and creative workshops for children from primary schools and secondary schools. Pictures in the collection serve as starting-points for new composition. The children (typically one class at a time) arrive at the Gallery in the morning, and are taken to one of the gallery spaces, where they are introduced to one (or more in the case of a group portrait) historical or contemporary portrait. The image then becomes the starting-point for instant music-theatre composition, the pupils working with professional musicians in a workshop space. In the afternoon the children return to the portrait in the main Gallery where they perform their composition in public.

The workshop is suitable for key stage 2 classes and lasts a full day. The workshops are run biannually and are led by leading musicians and animateurs Paul Griffiths and Pete Latanka.

We work also with older students at the NPG, often supporting the National Creative and Media Diploma. Picture This was a very successful project in 2008, working with students from Plumstead Manor School in Greenwich. Workshops took place in the Gallery and also in school, and to performances at the NPG (both in a Gallery space and also in the Lecture Theatre) and at Tate Modern. There was also a studio recording of the music (with composer Russell Hepplewhite) and a DVD of the final piece. Both are available on request.

Dates for this project in May are sold out, but the project will run again for a week near the end of September 2010, for which places are available (exact dates tbc). Interested schools should contact Alexa Hills on 020 7833 2555 or alexa.hills@englishtouringopera.org.uk

Lear is a project created and delivered by English Touring Opera and Dartington Hall Trust in collaboration with HMP Channings Wood in Devon. A week-long residency with two groups of men in September 2010 will lead to performance in the Prison for an audience of inmates. The week will consist of creative and devising workshops, in which songs and music will be written, design made, and a story created. The artistic team includes composer Andy Smith, director Tim Yealland, singer Abigail Kelly (as Cordelia), actor Steve Jacobs (as Lear), designer Jude Munden, and musicians Miguel Tantos, Adam Mackenzie and Rory Dempsey. With the king as a focal point and catalyst the workshops will explore themes of cruelty and forgiveness. Singing, drama, artwork, movement will constitute the elements of the resulting work, all underpinned by a musical world influenced by the surrounding heath of Dartmoor.

The autumn of 2010 sees ETO performing a new work based on Shakespeare’s King Lear: Promised End is the title of Alexander Goehr’s new opera, and its world premiere takes place this season. The production was workshopped in Dartington last January. Most of the play is set on a heath not unlike Dartmoor, and its themes of offending, guilt, self-knowledge and redemption make it the perfect platform for creating new responses to the issues that confront the characters.

An exciting strand of the project includes also a new collaboration with Kevicc (King Edward VI Community College) in Totnes. Working with designer Jude Munden students will devise the set that will form the visual structure of Lear in Channings Wood. Backdrops will go into the prison, and visual documentation and sound recordings of the performance will be shared between prison and school.

A new production (after hundreds of years) of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Duenna, a play with songs composed by the Linleys of Bath, depicting the scandalous elopement of the Irish playwright with Elizabeth Linley, a celebrated singer and society beauty. This opera, the most popular of the Georgian period – making the fortunes of the Covent Garden theatre – is tuneful, sabre-tongued, light-hearted and irreverent, the jewel of Georgian England.

Support The Duenna
If you would like a personal connection with a production and a special insight into the staging process, ETO’s production syndicate is the perfect way to become involved. Our next syndicate is in support of The Duenna. Join our Autumn 2010 production syndicate and become part of very special British Season.

See our Autumn 10 booking opening dates.

English Touring Opera presents Promised End, a new opera based on Shakespeare’s King Lear, by leading British composer Alexander Goehr. Promised End consists of 24 short scenes, selected, distilled and re-arranged by the composer and by scholar Sir Frank Kermode. The effect is to emphasise one aspect of Shakespeare’s great play: King Lear and the Earl of Gloucester, men who in their prime committed errors of judgment, bringing upon themselves their own tragic destinies.

Goehr, a leading composer with a distinguished career in Europe and Asia particularly, has drawn upon a range of influences in creating what he says will be his last opera. He describes the original ‘kernel’ idea as being inspired by Japanese Noh theatre and dance, also citing the influences such as the King Lear film adaptation of Koznitsev (with Shostakovich’s score), Bertolt Brecht, Ezra Pound, and a film by director Miklós Jancsó featuring a Hungarian military band – on which Goehr’s orchestration is partly based.

A Talking Programme for this performance will be available at the Hawth, Crawley for visually impaired people half an hour before the performance. Please reserve headsets in advance at the Box Office on 01293 553636.

Click here to hear some of Goehr’s music.

Photographs of Alexander Goehr by devondigital.co.uk

Promised End was developed at the Dartington Space with support from the Arts at Dartington.

One Day, Two Dawns was chosen as this year’s RPS Music Awards Winner in the Education category, from a strong shortlist including Sing Up, On the Rim of the World (a joint project also involving ETO, along with Glyndebourne, ROH and WNO Max), and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival’s Piano Phasing. The RPS citation reads:

The award goes to a collaborative project led by English Touring Opera working alongside Hall for Cornwall. One Day, Two Dawns was a musically driven large-scale community opera, reflecting the Cornish community in which it was devised and performed. The opera united a fantastically broad spectrum of participants – a flagship example of open-access musical celebration. The jury felt the whole process and performance had real educational and artistic substance, achieving an impressive balance between honouring tradition whilst saying something artistically fresh and vibrant.

One Day, Two Dawns was a new full-length community opera created with nearly 250 people in Cornwall in 2008/2009. Six months of creative workshops led to two performances at Hall for Cornwall on Wednesday 20th May 2009. The opera was a major collaboration between English Touring Opera and Hall for Cornwall, and includes partnerships with The Works, Cumpas, Duchy Opera, New Cornwall Opera, Dalla, Imerys Male Voice Choir, Cornwall Youth Dance Company, Access Theatre, Falmouth University, as well as Poltair, Whitemoor and Curnow Schools.

The story was inspired by the coincidence between the sinking of Lyonesse into the sea in 1099, and the full solar eclipse visible in Cornwall in 1999. Trevelyan was the sole survivor of the cataclysm 900 years ago: he returns to take part in some contemporary Cornish battles. Participants were part of an exciting creative process leading to two final performances. Almost all the music and words were created by participants working with a professional team. The nine participating groups were be involved in a series of creative workshops prior to May 2009. About 90 workshops in all were being delivered by ETO/HfC

The professional creative team of composers, directors, writers, designers, players, and singers came from both Cornwall and across the UK. Artists include composers Rachel Leach, Hilary Coleman and Neil Davey, writer Elaine Ruth White, director Tim Yealland and designers Alan and Jude Munden. Soloists included Joe Shovelton as Trevelyan, Bianca Phillips as Isobel, and Rachel Peters and Tim Carleston as the developers.

One Day, Two Dawns was funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Youth Music, Equitable Charitable Trust and the PRS Foundation for New Music

La clemenza di Tito is one of Mozart’s final works, and his most magnificent. Its epic story of terrorism, betrayal and forgiveness is set in blazing colours, requiring fearless singers. Julia Riley (our acclaimed Jane Seymour) plays the tortured hero who chooses passion for a dynamic woman (Gillian Ramm) over loyalty to a noble emperor (Mark Wilde).

Exact dates of performances to be confirmed. For date ranges at each venue, download the Spring 2011 postcard on the right.

This production will be sung in English. Some captioned performances to be confirmed.

Photograph by Cecilie Harris.

Puccini’s two short operas Il tabarro (The Cloak) and Gianni Schicchi could hardly be more different: one is a moody romance ending in a grotesque murder on a barge in Paris, and the other is a sparkling comedy about a family inheritance in Florence. Composed by a mature master of drama and character, whose lyrical genius is epitomised in the lovely aria ‘O mio babbino caro’.

Exact dates of performances to be confirmed. For date ranges at each venue, download the Spring 2011 postcard on the right.

This production will be sung in Italian with English captions.

Photograph by Cecilie Harris.

Fantastic Mr Fox is an irrepressible opera, pitting the wild animal world against three farmers and their devilish (soprano!) digger. Colourful, light hearted, and highly physical, this is a perfect night at the opera for adults and young people alike.

Exact dates of performances to be confirmed. For date ranges at each venue, download the Spring 2011 postcard on the right.

This production will be sung in English.