A combination of brilliant marketing and shamefully lazy journalism may have fooled many into thinking pub opera's Year Zero was the day the Olivier Award winning La Bohème opened. But in fact small-scale opera has been a feature of the capital's music life for many years, offering an intimate and informal experience at very reasonable prices.
Dioneo Opera Company's new production of The Emperor of Atlantis runs from 5 to 9 April at the Cello Factory near Waterloo and then transfers to the Arcola as part of the Grimeborn Festival on 17 and 18 August. The opera was written in 1943 in the Terezin concentration camp by the Czech-Jewish composer, Viktor Ullmann. The story approaches the Holocaust from an absurdist perspective culminating in a haunting, redemptive chorale. The SS closed down the public dress rehearsal in the camp and sent composer and librettist to their deaths in Auschwitz. The manuscript was passed on to another inmate who survived and since the 1970's the piece has been performed to great success elsewhere, but only very rarely in the UK. The cast includes current and former RAM, Guildhall and Trinity students under the musical direction of John Murton and it's directed by Max Höhn. Tickets £10-£12.
Hampstead Garden Opera present Handel's Semele Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate from 8 to 17 April, including a couple of weekend matinees. HGO’s resident Music Director Oliver-John Ruthven will conduct a young cast and the baroque ensemble Musica Poetica London from the harpsichord in a production directed by James Hurley. Tickets £16-£20.
Robert Hugill's new opera When a man knows (premiered in concert version at last year's Tete at Tete festival) will be performed at The Bridewell Theatre, just off Fleet Street from 31 March to 2 April. It's conducted by David Roblou, directed by Ian Caddy, and features Zoe South as the Woman and Dario Dugandzic as the Man. You can even check out a video of the concert performance before you go! Tickets £8-£10.
Where does the brilliant marketing come in? Most things so-called are mere accident (then claimed by marketing types as their own genius).
Posted by: Opera Lover | 27 March 2011 at 06:41 PM
I speak as a marketing type myself and I see no evidence of it here. Lazy journalism, yes, some very good fortune and a large dollop of trading in other people's ignorance (as you so rightly point out). Hold on, perhaps that is a definition of brilliant marketing? Good luck to OUC but all is not what is claimed.
Posted by: Opera Lover | 27 March 2011 at 06:50 PM
The opera companies you are mentioning have to take a bit of the blame if they are not better known.
I went to Hampstead Garden Opera for example, I really liked it, and I am positive I asked to be in their mailing list. Well, I haven't got any reminders or incitements to know about their new productions, which is a real shame because what I saw deserves to have a full house every time.
"Tete at Tete" is another point in case, I keep in touch, but all the information is about performances that frankly have nothing to do with opera (IMHO). I know once in a while they try something, but one loses interest.
In the other hand the opera company that stages La Boheme sends me updates of what they are doing, new productions, and are infectious and enthusiastic about their work.
Marketing clearly has something to do the success of this company, and perhaps journalism is less than stellar (lets be honest, some of the singers in "La Boheme" are less than capable), but this company at the very least remembers us, the people that have supported them.
Posted by: J M | 30 March 2011 at 11:13 AM