Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival 2020

Festival Events

08

September

Rain

19:00-19:50 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. The love affair between a sinister novelist and a married woman, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends suddenly, igniting his love and jealousy.

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08

September

Moon Woman

19:55-20:05 @ The Cockpit. What might have happened if space travel had taken a different course?

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08

September

Karakoram – A Contemporary Opera

20:15-21:45 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. An opera about the yeti, horror, and the fear and misunderstanding of the unknown.

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09

September

The Hive

19:00-19:50 (Part 1), 20:10-21:05 (Part 2) Hopefully @ The Cockpit. Violent real life crimes and magical realism mix, with forensic doctors and fairytale victims to explore our interest in female serial killers.

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09

September

Song of Isis, Goddess of Love

21:15-21:45 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. Isis, the Ancient Egyptian goddess, searches for her murdered husband, expressing the sorrow of all women whose loved ones have disappeared.

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10

September

LOOP

19:00-19:30 Hopefully @ The Cockpit, “I know you are, but what am I?" A playful look at the stories we retell and squabbles that get stuck on repeat, where observers become players in the story.

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10

September

Folk Tales

19:50-20:30 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. Folk Tales will magic you away to world where symbols have as much power as actions, and a word can change your fate.

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10

September

A Time of Empty Tales

21:00-21:40 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. The Lost One is trapped a decrepit basement with the sinister Friend who begins to steer her into the chaos of addiction and religious fundamentalism.

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11

September

The Trilobite, Or The Fall Of Mr Williams

19:00-19:30, Hopefully @ The Cockpit. A journey to Exmoor. A love triangle. A near-death experience. A lecture in geology. An opera. All played out in mid-air.

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11

September

A&E

19:50-20:50 @ The Cockpit. A compact opera about love in modern times. Conceptual, intense, fun…a minimalistic x-ray of our emotional patterns nowadays.

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11

September

Siddhartha

POSTPONED. Based on Herman Hesse's novel, this is a meditative piece about finding the truth of our existence in the place that we are.

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12

September

Paradise Lost

18:00-19:00 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. Based on Milton's Paradise Lost, with its sympathetic portrayal of Lucifer, with Lawrence Zazzo in the role.

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12

September

The Buddha, the Monkey King and the Monk of the...

19:20-20:20 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. A new opera adapted from ‘Journey to the West’ by Wu Cheng'en, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.

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12

September

Sorry I missed you

21:00-21:30 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. A relationship played out via answering machines... two who are forced to live separately, and miss each other continuously, in more ways than one.

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14

September

The Agency

19:00-19:45 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. An urgent new eco-noir opera; two female detectives - one in the American Civil War, one today working for for the Pinkerton Detective Agency start to question the role it plays in their worlds

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14

September

Music and the Brain

POSTPONED. A new electro-opera inspired by the case studies of Oliver Sacks. The Singer has had an accident which caused her to lose the ability to comprehend music.

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14

September

BIRD

21:30-22:10 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. The life and death of BIRD. Human flesh is transmuted into the form of a bird as vocalisations and birdsong are electronically transformed.

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15

September

Timeless Figure

19:00-19:40 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. Timeless Figure is about Time. See J.B.Joyce, making clocks in Shropshire in 1680, transported into the world of trains, telegraph and ever-faster movement.

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15

September

The Manna Threshold

20:00-20:45 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. In 2270, two beings in different stages of immortality negotiate their respective conditions.

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15

September

We Sing/I Sang

21:10-21:55 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. A collective consciousness starts to schism and crack. An improvised opera and ritual drawing on the audience's experiences and stories.

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16

September

The Bridge Between Breaths

19:00-19:45 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. An artist shares the stage with singers and instrumentalists, responding to sound with brushstrokes on canvas. Deaf and hearing audiences meet in the space between breaths.

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16

September

Minutes to Midnight: A Nuclear Opera

20:10-20:50 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. Deep in the bowels of a bunker in North Dakota, 20-some-year-olds Lieutenants Martinez and Walker have one job: follow protocol. A new president is about to be elected.

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16

September

Last Party on Earth

21:15-21:50 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. Evoking the niceties of early opera, this musical comedy looks at the end of human life on Earth.

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17

September

Elena

19:00-19:40 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. Three minds, three women, three generations with a common past that persists in the form of transgenerational trauma.

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17

September

Persephone’s Dream

20:00-20:20 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. A digital/live hybrid opera that tells a story of withdrawal from the world. Unpicking the rites of hibernation and exploring whether, in our waking sleep, we can still yearn, struggle, resist - be human.

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17

September

Baby Girl

POSTPONED. An opera for the Reddit generation. Built on found texts including Sappho, Andrea Dworkin, and the unedited comment threads appearing on pornographic subreddits.

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18

September

Her War

19:30-20:20 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. A ground-breaking physical theatre opera exploring the female experience of PTSD for those returning from active service after WWI.

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18

September

Persephone’s Dream

20:30-20:50 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. A digital/live hybrid opera that tells a story of withdrawal from the world. Unpicking the rites of hibernation and exploring whether, in our waking sleep, we can still yearn, struggle, resist - be human.

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18

September

Tiresias 2.0

21:00-22:00 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. The Tiresias 2.0 Programme carries a corrupted and evolving cultural code of the final generation of humans with nothing but a plant pot for company.

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19

September

The Crocodile of Old Kang Pow

18:30-19:30 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. The Marquis De Sade has lost his libido and must find it or lose his head. His quest takes him to a mythical world to petition its Crocodile God of fertility.

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19

September

Beethoven Was A Lesbian

19:50-20:20 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. An homage to Pauline Oliveros in extravagant temporal drag. Through playful dialogue and promiscuous citation, it seduces the tropes of classical music in order to dominate them.

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19

September

The Minutes of the Hildegard von Bingen Society...

20:20-20:50 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. This piece transplants, re-roots, and propagates a queer, feminist gardening society founded by 12th century mystic and musician Hidegard von Bingen.

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19

September

Nous

Postponed. Two people who are emotionally unfamiliar with one another learn to do more than 'loving with the eyes,' forming a deep emotional connection through the pursuit of truth.

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20

September

Bubbles the Zebrafish & The No. 8 Bus

14:00-15:15 Hopefully @ The Cockpit. Bubbles the Zebrafish & the No. 8 Bus is an opera for children, exploring the effects and solutions to plastic in the Pacific Ocean.

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20

September

Bread and Circuses

20:00-21:30 hopefully @ The Cockpit. A family epic in the world of professional wrestling, telling the personal stories that have shaped the political culture which enabled the Trump presidency.

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26

July

The Other Side of the Sea & beyond

19:30-20:10 @ The Cockpit. A programme of operatic excerpts performed solo by soprano Héloïse Werner

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26

July

Earth Makes No Sound

Cancelled but Reimagined @ online as part of Cubitt Sessions Digital Stage for 2020

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29

July

OMTF – Resilience and Reinvention

14:00-17:00 @ Zoom. The Opera and Music Theatre Forum chairs panel discussions looking at how companies adapt to changing times.

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29

July

Crewdson & Cevanne

Cancelled but Reimagined @ online as part of Cubitt Sessions Digital Stage for 2020

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30

July

STOUT | MCKAY

Cancelled but Reimagined @ online as part of Cubitt Sessions Digital Stage for 2020

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31

July

Skin

POSTPONED. A powerful new performance investigating climate crisis, the impact of environmental change on human displacement, migration and our attitudes towards otherness.

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05

August

Ayanna Witter-Johnson

Cancelled but Reimagined @ online as part of Cubitt Sessions Digital Stage for 2020

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01

January

Goblin Market

@ in your imagination. BYMT are dreaming and more will be shared soon. A chamber opera of high energy physical theatre and complex musical harmonies based on Christina Rossetti’s famous tale.

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01

January

THE PARADIS FILES

@ In your imagination. The tale of a blind composer and pianist - behind her success is the story of a woman who was used as a source of ‘inspiration’ and had to grapple with a daily life of endless medical treatments.

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