Photo: Robert Golden
Nadine Mortimer Smith, soprano, at the work in progress rehearsal at Opera North, Leeds, Autumn 2010.
In January a small team from Opera Circus will visit India in January 2012. These are the first steps in developing a real collaboration between artists from the UK and from India to create this new chamber opera, Naciketa. The music is being written by Nigel Osborne and the libretto has been written by Ariel Dorfman. David Pountney helped with dramaturgical support during a visit to the Bregenz Festival in Austria in August. We are very grateful to the British Council for covering the costs of this research trip and to many people who have contributed with introductions and have opened doors to the myriad of possibilities that this new work could hold. We would especially like to thank Nelson Fernandez, Sanjoy Roy, Divya Bhatia and many others. We will print a full list at the end of our journey.
The hope is that the premiere of this new work will be held in India in 2013 followed by a tour of the continent and then to London and an UK tour.
Prakriti Dutta
A documentary will be made following the meetings and events of this journey through to the residency, sharing working practice which we hope will be later this year and finally the creation of the production, the rehearsal period and the first night.
Nigel Osborne
We have been working with the Udayachi schools run by the Godrej family just outside of Mumbai, India where one of the graduates of Nigel Osborne’s Music in the Community course at Edinburgh University has been developing innovative teaching ideas with 96 children from the ages of 7 – 12 with the support and involvement of their teachers. This process will continue and we hope develop. Meetings have been arranged with several charities and foundations in India working with disadvantaged children and young people with the aim of sharing the company’s skills in the various uses of music when working with children.
Ariel Dorfman will be speaking at the Jaipur Literary Festival between the 20th and 25th January and Nigel Osborne will travel from Jaipur to DAVOS where he has been invited to speak.
If you wish to donate to this work and the development of the opera please go to our Big Give web site – the link is - http://new.thebiggive.org.uk/projects/view/12336