20:30-21:25, Saturday 19th September 2026
The Cockpit
The Promise
Music: Ng Kwun Ho / Jerry Fryderyk
Libretto: Courtney Cousins
Meet The Philips
Music: Alessandro Mackinnon-Botti
Libretto: Wilkie Robson
The Promise and Meet The Philips are a pair of chamber operas created by emerging composers from the Royal Academy of Music.
The evening brings two worlds onto one stage: a vivid, fast-moving programme where different musical languages, cultural perspectives and theatrical styles collide.
In “The Promise”, cultural erasure becomes a live struggle between imposed and remembered, where singing itself becomes resistance.
In “Meet The Philips”, an entire marriage unfolds in one domestic space, with the TV as the couple’s third wheel: comic, invasive, intimate, and quietly devastating.
Come to the first show this evening for two more operas for an evening moving between folklore, psychological drama, political urgency, and domestic comedy, The Breaking Point offers opera with pace, contrast, and sharp theatrical images. It asks what happens when the forces around us — nature, language, competition, media, love — stop staying in the background and start to break the sense of what we are.
Age range: All ages, but mostly adults
In a festival of new work, please note that shows can often overrun.
Produced by Young Opera Makers & the Royal Academy of Music
Venue: The Cockpit, Gateforth Street, London NW8 8EH.
Instagram (Alessandro Mackinnon-Botti)
On the same day:
The Promise” Music: Ng Kwun Ho /Jerry Fryderyk Libretto: Courtney Cousins Director: Sophie Daneman Cast: Jerry Fryderyk, Miyu Himeta, Alexander Thow “Meet The Philips” Music: Alessandro Mackinnon-Botti Libretto: Wilkie Robson Director: Sophie Daneman Cast: Ian Gillis, Miro Treharne
The Promise”
Music: Ng Kwun Ho / Jerry Fryderyk
Libretto: Courtney Cousins
Director: Sophie Daneman
Cast: Jerry Fryderyk, Miyu Himeta, Alexander Thow
“Meet The Philips”
Music: Alessandro Mackinnon-Botti
Libretto: Wilkie Robson
Director: Sophie Daneman
Cast: Ian Gillis, Miro Treharne