This brand new production from the Welsh National Opera is based on Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy's acclaimed poetry collection, The World's Wife. Composer, Tom Green, has transformed this firework poetry collection into a beautiful and beguiling chamber opera.
Featuring The Mavron Quartet, ‘Wales’ leading string quartet’ (BBC Radio 3)
Scored for solo soprano, string quartet and loop pedals, the work features vocalist Amanda Forbes, who starred in the premiere of Philip Glass’s adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial in 2014.
The piece uses musical quotations from women composers from various historical periods. You will hear a 12th Century plainchant by Hildegard of Bingen, 19th Century German lieder by Clara Schumann and music by Barbara Strozzi, the most popular composer of cantatas in 17th Century Venice.
Join us for this earthy, daring and exciting new opera on an intimate scale, as five onstage musicians construct choirs and armies of strings to tell a story we all share.
Here is what composer Tom Green has to say:
'Composing with a motherlode of loop pedals has allowed me to have multiple active characters sung by a single soprano, all giving an explosive re-telling of their stories. As the string quartet loops itself from a string orchestra to an army of mechanical ants, the soprano's characters accumulate, and she becomes an archetype - the World's Wife.'
This opera will run for 70 minutes without an interval, and will be sung in English with on screen surtitles in English.
The World's Wife: Thu 19 Oct, 7.30pm. £15 / £13
Tickets 01874 611622 or online at http://bit.ly/2y2noTJ More stories