Catch up with all productions from our 13th Festival, which we proudly produced amid the unfurling of the Covid-19 pandemic, presenting dozens of events and 30 new operas in the theatre and online.
July
19:30-20:10, Live Performance. A programme of operatic excerpts performed solo by soprano Héloïse Werner
14:00-17:00, Interactive Broadcast. The Opera and Music Theatre Forum chairs panel discussions looking at how companies adapt to changing times.
September
Throughout the Festival, Online. This piece transplants, re-roots, and propagates a queer, feminist gardening society founded by 12th century mystic and musician Hidegard von Bingen.
18:00-19:00, Interactive Broadcast. 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.
SOLD OUT. 19:30-20:10, Live Performance. 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.
19:00-19:30, Live Performance. 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.
SOLD OUT. 19:00-19:35, Live Performance. Folk Tales will magic you away to world where symbols have as much power as actions, and a word can change your fate.
20:00-21:00, Interactive Broadcast. 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.
18:00-19:00, Interactive Broadcast. 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.
20:15-21:15, Interactive Broadcast. Isis, the Ancient Egyptian goddess, searches for her murdered husband, expressing the sorrow of all women whose loved ones have disappeared.
17:00-18:00, Interactive Broadcast. Folk Tales will magic you away to world where symbols have as much power as actions, and a word can change your fate.
18:00-19:00, Live Performance. Milton’s Paradise Lost seen through the eyes of Lucifer — a one-man opera performed by countertenor Lawrence Zazzo
19:15-20:15, Interactive Broadcast. In 2270, two beings in different stages of immortality negotiate their respective conditions.
SOLD OUT. 20:15-20:55, Live Performance. 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.
18:00-19:00, Interactive Broadcast. 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
19:00-19:40, Live Performance. The life and death of BIRD. Human flesh is transmuted into the form of a bird as vocalisations and birdsong are electronically transformed.
19:45-20:55, Interactive Broadcast. A compact opera about love in modern times. Conceptual, intense, fun… a minimalistic x-ray of our emotional patterns nowadays.
SOLD OUT. 21:00-21:40, Live Performance. 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.
18:00-19:00, Interactive Broadcast. 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.
SOLD OUT. 19:00-19:40, Live Performance. 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.
19:45-21:00, Interactive Broadcast. Milton’s Paradise Lost seen through the eyes of Lucifer — a one-man opera performed by countertenor Lawrence Zazzo
21:00-21:45, Live Performance. A collective consciousness starts to schism and crack. An improvised opera and ritual drawing on the audience's experiences and stories.
18:00-19:00, Interactive Broadcast. 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.
19:00-19:40, Live Performance. 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.
20:00-21:00, Interactive Broadcast. The life and death of BIRD. Human flesh is transmuted into the form of a bird as vocalisations and birdsong are electronically transformed.
SOLD OUT. 21:00-21:30, Live Performance. Evoking the niceties of early opera, this musical comedy looks at the end of human life on Earth.
18:00-19:00, Interactive Broadcast. 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.
19:00-19:30, Live Performance. A journey to Exmoor. A love triangle. A near-death experience. A lecture in geology. An opera. All played out in mid-air.
19:40-20:40, Interactive Broadcast. A collective consciousness starts to schism and crack. An improvised opera and ritual drawing on the audience's experiences and stories.
21:00-21:50, Live Performance. Violent real life crimes and magical realism mix, with forensic doctors and fairytale victims to explore our interest in female serial killers.
18:00-19:00, Interactive Broadcast. 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.
19:00-19:30, Live Performance. A ground-breaking physical theatre opera exploring the female experience of PTSD for those returning from active service after WWI.
19:40-20:40, Interactive Broadcast. Evoking the niceties of early opera, this musical comedy looks at the end of human life on Earth.
20:45-21:15, Live Performance. 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.
18:00-19:00, Interactive Broadcast. A journey to Exmoor. A love triangle. A near-death experience. A lecture in geology. An opera. All played out in mid-air.
19:00-19:30, Live Performance. A new opera adapted from ‘Journey to the West’ by Wu Cheng'en, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.
19:45-20:45, Interactive Broadcast. Violent real life crimes and magical realism mix, with forensic doctors and fairytale victims to explore our interest in female serial killers.
13:30-14:15, Live Performance. Bubbles the Zebrafish & the No. 8 Bus is an opera for children, exploring the effects and solutions to plastic in the Pacific Ocean.
20:00-20:45, Live Performance. A family epic in the world of professional wrestling, telling the personal stories that have shaped the political culture which enabled the Trump presidency.
18:00-19:00, Interactive Broadcast. A ground-breaking physical theatre opera exploring the female experience of PTSD for those returning from active service after WWI.
21:00-22:00, Interactive Broadcast. 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.
18:00-19:00, Interactive Broadcast. 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.
19:30-20:30, Interactive Broadcast. A new opera adapted from ‘Journey to the West’ by Wu Cheng'en, one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.
18:00-19:00, Interactive Broadcast. Bubbles the Zebrafish & the No. 8 Bus is an opera for children, exploring the effects and solutions to plastic in the Pacific Ocean.
20:00-21:00, Interactive Broadcast. A family epic in the world of professional wrestling, telling the stories that have shaped the political culture which enabled the Trump presidency.
19:00-20:00, Interactive Broadcast. 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.
October
Online until 1st November as part of Cubitt Sessions Digital Stage for 2020. Classical music & R&B fusion. A performance dedicated to Jamaican Independence, mixing original songs and classics from the great Jamaican songbook.
Online until 1st November as part of Cubitt Sessions Digital Stage for 2020. Chris Stout and Catriona McKay fuse the traditions of their native Shetland and Dundee with contemporary music in a special version for Cubitt Sessions.
Online until 1st November as part of Cubitt Sessions Digital Stage for 2020. A collaboration between an award-winning composer, an electronic instrument-builder, and first soloist of the Birmingham Royal Ballet.
Online until 1st November as part of Cubitt Sessions Digital Stage for 2020. Filament Theatre’s collaborative choral work inspired by the elements and climate change.
November
14:00-15:00. A talk from the team behind the DCMS opera pilot and a hybrid festival of over 51 events including 19 shows in a theatre with paying audiences.
Online, 16:30-17:30. A chat with female creatives, exploring innovation and the creative process in times of Covid-19, and the future of women opera-makers.
19:00 - 20:00, Interactive Broadcast. Three minds, three women, three generations with a common past that persists in the form of transgenerational trauma.
