14:00-19:00, Sunday 20th September 2026
The Cockpit
Tête â Tête, Aukoko and CN Lester invite you to share tea, cake and thinking about not what opera was or is but what it could be – visions for and pathways to the future.
“We all were sea-swallow’d, though some cast again,
And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.”
Antonio, Act II, Scene 1 The Tempest, William Shakespeare 1611
Richard Branson described the financial crisis of 2008 as a “correction”, not a crisis. Brutal though this is, opera is without a doubt really hitting a pivot point right now. A whole community of artists, meanwhile, has grown out of Tête à Tête passionately committed to the art form, and to reinvigorating our art form through bold new work.
We invite you to join our young, inclusive, visionary community to enjoy some cake, a smattering of performance, some provocations and a call to action. Fuelled by both what we bring and discussion on the day, we will jointly envision where to move on from this pivot point and how we can make a future for the art form that holds us so in its thrall.
Schedule:
14:00 The Artist Tea
A talk / A sharing / breaking of bread – Led by host April Koyejo-Audiger (Atelier Aukoko)
A curated gathering around tea & cake, bringing artists and participants together to share experiences, ideas, questions and stories centered on the exploration of the future of opera .
15:00 Tea and Cake at the bar
15:30 Short Performance 1 TBA – April
16:00 ‘Where and What Next? From Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival onwards’ – a provocation by CN Lester.
– The current state of opera, classical music, the music industry in general and audience, commissioning, economic and funding trends and data, and what this means for TàT artists
– Creative ways to forge a career and make authentic and satisfying work within this framework
– Will use both their academic research and their own work – particularly Frankenstein and their work on Barbara Strozzi – to ground this talk in practical examples
– Provide resources and provocations to further work/calls to action
– Q&A Time allowing
17:00 Short performance 2 tba (CN)
Tea and cake at the bar
17:30 Opera without limits
Part sharing, part workshop
A rapid fire operamaking workshop, exploring trends, technology and storytelling.
Ending with an option for participants to present a short presentation .
19:00 adjourn to the bar for celebrations and ruminations.
Drinks 19:00 to get out – pay bar.
CN Lester [they/them] is a multi-genre musician, author of the critically-acclaimed Trans Like Me, and founder and artistic director of the award-winning arts event Transpose at the Barbican. Classical performance engagements include work with Wigmore Hall, BBC Radio 3 and 4, Kings Head Theatre, and Spitalfields Music. Composition commissions include: National Youth Choir, Fourth Choir, CRIPtic Arts, and Britten Pears Arts.
As an ensemble singer they work across a broad range of projects with TRANS VOICES, from new experimental commissions for Barbican and the Serpentine Gallery to backing vocals for Alanis Morrisette and Imogen Heap.
CN Lester holds an interdisciplinary performance/research PhD on composer Barbara Strozzi, and their original work on her life and music was published in Barbara Strozzi in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2026). Academic research and teaching interests include performance and composition, gender and music, and the history of gender and sexuality. As an independent scholar, some of the institutions they have worked with include the Royal Academy of Music, University of Manchester, University of Edinburgh, Oxford University, and Trinity College Dublin.
They work internationally as a trans/queer/feminist educator, writer, speaker, and activist. Words and alternative music appearances include: Newsnight, ITV, the Guardian, SBS, Sydney Opera House, Southbank Centre, Royal Exchange, The Arts Club, and arts and book festivals, radio, and print worldwide. They made their fiction debut with the 2023 collection Furies, alongside Margaret Atwood, Ali Smith, and Emma Donoghue.
CN is currently working on their next EP of songs, Fellow Travellers, their second popular non-fiction book, and operas Frankenstein and The Unknown Goddess.
April Koyejo-Audiger (Creative Director of Atelier Aukoko)
April Koyejo-Audiger, described by The Guardian as “a gloriously full-bodied soprano,” is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist and writer working across opera, theatre, and new media. A graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and the Royal College of Music, Alumni of the Jette Parker Artist (Royal Ballet & Opera programmer and an alumni of Soho Theatre’s Writers’ Lab. She is the original co-creator and performer of YUM!, developed at TalentLab 2024 at the Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg and winner of the 2025 FEDORA Digital Prize. In development is “The Place Between Dreams” selected for residency at Britten Pears 26/27 – an opera installation co-created with pianist Kamilla Arku.
She is currently serving as librettist on a new opera based on Capot, a play by TD Moyo, developed at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and premiering at the Barbican Centre in September 2026.