Touring from Wednesday 28 June – Sunday 23 July: OperaUpClose and Manchester Camerata current The Flying Dutchman

From the SS Nice Britain in Bristol to a former turbine manufacturing unit in Liverpool, a radically re-imagined Wagner masterpiece excursions to waterside venues

Phrases by Glyn Maxwell, orchestration by Laura Bowler in affiliation with Robin Wallington and directed by Lucy Bradley

‘Compelling… Putting music theatre of appreciable integrity and pressure’, ★★★★ Guardian on OperaUpClose’s La traviata) / ‘Britain’s most adventurous orchestra’ The Instances on Manchester Camerata

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Bringing the maritime opera to audiences in unconventional efficiency venues at waterside places, award-winning OperaUpClose in partnership with latest RPS Award profitable Manchester Camerata reinvigorate Wagner’s traditional with an English libretto by poet and novelist Glyn Maxwell and an 8-piece chamber orchestration by Laura Bowler. 

The Flying Dutchman is a haunting political story exploring the displacement of individuals and the psychology and realities of residing on an island with hardening borders, bringing an pressing and modern relevance to the fable of the ships captain cursed to roam the ocean without end. Opening at Turner Sims in Southampton, The Flying Dutchman will then tour throughout the UK to extraordinary efficiency areas in waterside places ending at dwell music venue Invisible Wind Manufacturing unit, Liverpool.

The manufacturing steers from conventional ‘end-on’ efficiency, breaking the fourth wall and immersing the viewers instantly on the earth of the story. It dismantles the normal obstacles between pit, stage and orchestra with all performers, instrumentalists and singers, having equal company as storytellers. It consists of pre-recorded voices from a nationwide community of group choirs, a virtuosic chamber orchestra and a principal forged of internationally-renowned opera singers.

Creative Director Flora McIntosh stated, ‘This Dutchman is a gathering of traditional materials with sturdy, modern voices creating a robust dialogue between the previous and the brand new. Reconceived as a story of paranoia, propaganda and other people smuggling, carried out in locations and areas that join on to the fabric, this manufacturing takes a extremely theatrical and modern strategy to musical storytelling.’

Thematically linked and operating adjoining to The Flying Dutchman is We two had been lovers – The Sea and I: This highly effective musical and poetic journey will tackle comparable themes across the motion of individuals, island mentality and humanity’s advanced love affair with the ocean. This charming psychological drama is centred round Toria Banks’s new, modern model of Arianna a Naxos, Haydn’s dramatic cantata which tells the story of some of the tragic figures of Greek mythology Princess Ariadne. The impactful mixture of music and spoken phrase a few troubled younger lady’s psyche as she struggles with the boundaries between love and delusion will probably be carried out in English by a singer and a harpist with extra music by Wagner, Dvořák and Rebecca Clarke, poetry by Emily Dickinson and Carol Ann Duffy and curated and directed by OperaUpClose Creative Director Flora McIntosh, We two had been lovers – The Sea and I opens at Quay Arts, Isle of Wight on 4 June and can then tour the nation additionally taking in waterside venues culminating at Grand Junction in London.

OperaUpClose is a nationwide touring opera firm, rooted in theatre with partnership and innovation at its coronary heart. Newly based mostly within the Southwest, and dealing from the dynamic cultural hub MAST, Southampton, OperaUpClose are making opera of the best high quality with and for everybody, enhancing the supply, relevance and attain of opera by taking high-quality, reasonably priced productions to locations and other people throughout the UK not in any other case well-served by the humanities.

OperaUpClose distills the essence of traditional operas into new, modern works with their very own inventive integrity and excellence, creating legacy and influence by populating the repertoire with new commissions alongside daring interpretations of established materials. The intimate scale is an lively inventive alternative, strengthening a dedication to offer all performers equal company as storytellers and breaking down obstacles between pit, stage and viewers. OperaUpClose actively help new voices throughout the art- kind with paid coaching programmes for rising producers, administrators, conductors, writers and performers by our Younger Affiliate Artist Scheme and create work made with and for very younger youngsters, participating a brand new technology within the energy of musical storytelling. OperaUpClose are dedicated to creating opera as a vital a part of a various theatrical panorama nationwide.

Manchester Camerata prides itself on an authentic mixture of craft and braveness. With 5-star evaluations from The Impartial, in addition to the accolade of being hailed ‘Britain’s most adventurous orchestra’ (The Instances), Camerata is as snug opening Glastonbury Competition as it’s recording Mozart on the highest degree. They’re passionate concerning the conventional craft of an orchestra and the way it’s evolving. By excelling artistically and having the braveness to prioritise daring, compelling and various tasks, Camerata makes a optimistic distinction not solely to their audiences however to the well being and wellbeing of their communities as effectively. To realize this inventive excellence and forward-thinking ethos, collaboration is on the coronary heart of the whole lot Camerata does. Led by its visionary Music Director, Gábor Takács-Nagy (who considers music to be ‘religious drugs’), the orchestra collaborates with various worldwide artists, from Martha Argerich to New Order and Aziz Ibrahim to Lewis Capaldi. Their long-standing inventive partnerships with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Jess Gillam and AMC Gospel Choir sit alongside performances and excursions with eminent artists corresponding to Pinchas Zuckerman, Arvo Pärt, Yefim Bronfman, Javier Perianes, Istvan Vardai and Leticia Moreno amongst others.

Samantha McShane, Artistic Director of Manchester Camerata stated, ‘As an orchestra that prides itself on being relentlessly pioneering, we have now discovered the right companion in OperaUpClose, who share most of the identical values. This new, daring re-interpretation of The Flying Dutchman is a unbelievable approach for us to develop artistically in addition to discovering new methods to attach audiences’

Glyn Maxwell is a prolific and celebrated author of poetry, performs, novels and libretti. He has gained a number of awards for his poetry, together with the Somerset Maugham Prize, the E. M. Forster Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. His work has been shortlisted for the Costa, Ahead and T. S. Eliot Prizes. Lots of his performs have been staged within the UK and USA, together with The Lifeblood, which gained British Theatre Information’s Finest Play Award on the Edinburgh Fringe in 2004, and Liberty, which premiered at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2008. Glyn’s vital guidebook On Poetry was described by Hugo Williams in The Spectator as ‘a contemporary traditional’. In his ‘brilliantly unclassifiable’ (The Guardian) sequel, Drinks With Useless Poets: The Autumn Time period, a number of deceased poets seem as characters, their speech taken verbatim from their writings. The rights to his epic poem based mostly on the Flying Dutchman legend, Time’s Idiot, have been purchased by Fox Searchlight for improvement right into a function movie. Glyn’s opera libretti embrace The Lion’s Face (for Elena Langer), Seven Angels (for Luke Bedford), The Firework Maker’s Daughter and Nothing (for David Bruce) and, for OperaUpClose in 2017, The Magic Flute.

Laura Bowler, described as ‘a triple menace composer-performer provocatrice’ (The Arts Desk) is a composer, vocalist and Creative Director specialising in theatre, multidisciplinary work and opera. She has been commissioned throughout the globe by ensembles and orchestras together with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, ROH2, Opera Holland Park, The Opera Group, Manchester Camerata, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Quatuor Bozzini (Canada), Ensemble Phace (Austria), Ensemble Linea (France) and Omega Ensemble (Australia).

Laura stated ‘Working with Manchester Camerata we’ve discovered new methods to include the instrumentalists into the theatre of the work that may join with audiences new to opera. At its coronary heart this mission faucets into my want to dismantle institutions and our presumptions of what one thing needs to be. We’re in a brand new place in society that we have now to acknowledge in artwork.’

Lucy Bradley is a director whose work ranges from giant scale Opera homes and regional theatres to website particular places and drama colleges. She skilled in Drama at Middlesex College, graduating with a level specialising in Directing. As a practitioner, inclusion and empowerment are on the coronary heart of her work and Lucy has typically labored with marginalised or onerous to succeed in teams. She has led tasks for pupil referral unites and refugee teams and labored with weak younger folks and people vulnerable to exclusion. Her credit as a director embrace; Clean Canvas (OperaUpClose); No Sound Ever Dies (Surrey Arts at Brooklands Museum); Eugene Onegin (Arcola Theatre); Belongings (Glyndebourne); The Discovering (Mahogany Opera Group); Recital 1 (British Museum and Gemäldagalerie, Berline); Discovered and Misplaced (Corinthia Lodge); Tycho’s Dream and Into the Harbour (Glyndebourne Schooling); Road Scene (Revival Director for The Opera Group); The Final Pearly (Wealthy Combine); The Wind within the Willows and Grimm Tales (ALRA); An Ode to My Sisters (Regional Tour); The Onomatopoeia Society (Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh). As Affiliate Director, credit; Road Scene (Teatro Actual Madrid, Köln and Monte Carlo).