Since its inception in 1997, Tête à Tête has supported over 500 world premieres of new works all over the UK. Can we help you with your operatic dreams?

Whether you want to participate in the festival, or just get advice about getting into the industry or finding collaborators, the best place to start is the contact form below.

If you want to bring a show to the Festival all you need to do is send us your idea via this link and we will be in touch, and soon. It might just be an initial thought for a work, you might have already developed it, you may have never produced a work, you might have produced many. If in doubt just send it and we can start chatting about how to give it wings.

When programming the Festival, we’re looking for a burning passion for producing new, thought-provoking and striking work. We also want to make sure that we’re able to help the artists in our Festival beyond just giving them a venue. We’re not looking for perfectly-polished shows that could go on anywhere, but artists who want help developing their practice creatively, or learning new skills in producing, marketing, and other parts of the operatic process.

What happens?

The first step involves a conversation with one of the Tête à Tête team, giving you access to their wealth of experience. Your conversation might involve you getting advice about the sector, recommendations of possible collaborators and sources of inspiration, or of people who could support or help develop your work.

This holistic process is designed to make sure that everyone who gets in touch gets something useful out of the experience. It can also help us identify where an artist might need extra care and support to help ensure they can bring a show to fruition. We do everything we can to support Festival artists, especially those from unconventional routes into opera.

Timeline

Many of the artists Bill speaks to go on to produce work in a Festival. This may be a Festival within three to six months of the initial conversation, but it often ends up being a Festival one, two, or even three to four years later. It all depends on what is best for a particular artist.

These conversations really pick up in the autumn preceding each Festival. By the December before each year’s Festival, Bill normally has an idea of what will be programmed. However, unforeseeable events (fundraising, venue changes, pandemics) and shows falling by the wayside mean that there are still changes at this stage.

When a show is pencilled in, we can offer advice on fundraising applications and other things an artist needs to do to get a show ready. You can read more about the process for artists in our How, What, Where, When guide here, and find other guidance we give artists here.

From January, we typically have a firmer idea of what the eventual programme will look like, and what support that year’s artists will need to get the maximum possible benefit from the Festival. By March, programming is usually in its final stages, with venues chosen to match shows’ needs.

Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival usually takes place between June and September each year. Over the years, we have produced operas with themes as broad as war, gaming culture, love, serial killers, spinning and knitting, the Soviet Union, friendship, the circus, the Egyptian empire, bees, aliens, necrophiliac gay ducks… so share your ideas with us today!