Naciketa programme

Work in Progress Performances:

These four performances are to help all of us in the company assess the work at this interim stage and share with our audiences its future development. In each venue we have invited a mixed audience of youth theatre groups, students from universities, schools and colleges, local community associations, music professionals, associated artists and interested members of the public. The performances are free at this stage so we can secure creative partnerships at the highest level to lead us to Naciketa’s world premiere. The place and time have yet to be decided.

The work in progress performance contains six short musical extracts with a specially written text by our librettist Ariel Dorfman to help the audience follow the story and the journey of the characters. In Ariel Dorfman’s words the story is about, “Naciketa, the child-protagonist of this epic/opera must confront three of the deepest challenges to humanity in our time: girls who have been sold into prostitution, boys who have been recruited as soldiers, children who have been orphaned by war and tyranny. In each case, Naciketa is assisted by a song, it is music that literally rescues him in the worst moment, consoles him and his fellow boys and girls, forms a bridge toward a different sort of future. It is the openness of those torn and betrayed children to listen to and sing the same song with Naciketa that gives them hope that there can, in fact, be a world as lovely as the music that surrounds and comforts them. This is a musical epic/opera about hope.”

We would like to thank the following people and organisations for all their support in helping us to develop the work to this stage.

For Leeds and Opera North:

Dominic Gray

Projects Director

Angharad Cooper

Projects Officer

Colin Leppington

Howard Assembly Room Technician

Special thanks to Mrs Kalwnat Kaur Virdee from Pinky’s – Homemade at its Best who has supplied the food for the buffet at the Howard Assembly Room and to Ms. Keranjeet Kaur Virdee Chief Executive of South Asian Arts-UK. Also to the City Inn Hotel.

For Edinburgh and the Hebrides Ensemble:

Will Conway

Artistic Director and Conductor

Caroline Winn

General Manager

Vroniz Holsman and Lucy Sim for their help with the score. The Reid Concert Hall, The University of Edinburgh and The Queens Hall.

For London:

The Clore Studio and the Royal Opera House and Mousetrap Theatre Productions.

For Bridport Arts Centre:

All the staff at Bridport Arts Centre, Gables Guest House, Eype’s Mouth Hotel, Jalopy Pizza Company, 3 Hours West, Creeds the Printers, Beeline Taxis.

Opera Circus

Opera Circus is an experimental music theatre company that uses the operatic voice, contemporary music, physical theatre techniques and other diverse performance skills to create new works of opera and music theatre. The ensemble of artists is formed around each project but mostly using singers, instrumentalists and creative teams that work with the company on an ongoing basis. Opera Circus, a small to middle scale touring company, was founded in December 1990 and until six years ago was based in London, at which time the Artistic Director moved the company to Dorset. Opera Circus commissions new work and tours regionally, nationally and internationally. Over the last six years Opera Circus has begun to develop work that arises out of the needs of a community or society. To create art that communicates widely and to provide education and training programmes that have more than just fund raising potential and that grow out of the musical work that is touring at the time. The company has a close working relationship with Nigel Osborne and this is their second joint commission. Tina Ellen Lee is the Artistic Director and Producer of Opera Circus.

www.operacircus.co.uk

Naciketa has been commissioned and is being produced by Opera Circus.

NACIKETA from Opera Circus on Vimeo.

Hebrides Ensemble

Edinburgh-based Hebrides Ensemble is Scotland’s foremost contemporary music group, specialising in new, twentieth and twenty-first century chamber music, music theatre and chamber opera.

Led by the cellist and conductor William Conway and drawing upon the finest musicians within Scotland and Europe, Hebrides Ensemble is a flexible and intimate group, dedicated to presenting chamber music in new and interesting ways. The ensemble tours frequently to venues as far-flung as St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney to the Wigmore Hall in London, performs at international festivals and broadcasts and records regularly. Acclaimed for its imaginative and innovative programming and outstanding quality of performance, the group is a member of Re:New, a network of European contemporary music ensembles, which has at its heart the promotion and exchange of contemporary compositions throughout the Continent.

The Ensemble last year were shortlisted in the Chamber Music category of the 2009 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards.

‘Hebrides Ensemble takes no prisoners’ London Evening Standard

‘Few concerts come more stimulating than this’ The Scotsman 5 stars

‘bewitching and revelatory’ The Herald 5 stars

www.hebridesensemble.com

Opera North

Opera North is the national opera company for the North of England. Based in Leeds the Company produces nine mainstage productions a year, as well as its own orchestral series, a year round Education programme and a portfolio of Special Projects. Led by Music Director Richard Farnes and General Director Richard Mantle, the organisation is widely considered one of Britain’s leading arts organsations, and one of Europe’s most innovative opera companies.

In 2009 Opera North took over the Howard Assembly Room, a unique 350 seat performance space in the centre of Leeds. This venue now sits at the heart of the Company’s smaller-scale, experimental and cross art-form work, and has hosted collaborations with artists ranging from composer Gavin Brays to audio-visual pioneers United Visual Artists, and from avant-garde film-makers The Quay Brothers to folk singers The Unthanks. With a strong interest in new work and in cultural diversity, Opera North is delighted to be part of the process of making Naciketa come alive.

“On so many fronts, Opera North is quietly establishing itself as the most distinctive UK opera company…” Financial Times

www.operanorth.com

Biographies:

Nigel Osborne: Composer

Nigel Osborne studied composition with Kenneth Leighton, his predecessor as Reid Professor of Music at Edinburgh University; with Egon Wellesz, the first pupil of Arnold Schoenberg; and with Witold Rudzinski. He also studied at the Polish Radio Experimental Studio,Warsaw.

His works have been featured in most major international festivals and performed by many leading orchestras and ensembles around the world, ranging from the Moscow to the Berlin Symphony Orchestras, and from the Philharmonia of London to the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

He has had close relationships with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, London Sinfonietta, Hebrides Ensemble and Ensemble Intercontemporain, Paris, and has composed extensively for the theatre, with operas and music theatre works for Glyndebourne; English National Opera; the Hebbel Theatre, Berlin; the Shakespeare Globe, BBC Radio 3 and BBC 2.
These include The 7 Last Words, Hell’s Angels, The Tempest, King Lear, Terrible Mouth, Sarajevo, Europa, Medea, and The Electrification of the Soviet Union.
Other works include Forest-River-Ocean commissioned by the Highland Festival 1996 (repeated in the City of London Festival 2002).
He wrote the opera The Piano Tuner for Music Theatre Wales which was premiered in 2006 at the Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House, London.

Nigel Osborne was the winner of the Opera Prize of Radio Suisse Romande and Ville de Geneve, the Netherlands Gaudeamus Prize, the Radcliffe Award and the Koussevitzky Award of the Library of Congress, Washington.

In 2007 Nigel Osborne wrote Differences in Demolition with libretto by the eminent Bosnian poet Goran Simic. This toured throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and Scotland and was also seen in London at the City of London Festival. This work has been invited to Vienna for a concert performance in December 2010 by the Organisation for Security and Co operation for Peace (OSCE) at the Hofburg Palace to celebrate their joint endeavours to ensure lasting peace in the region and prior to that as the first opera ever to be performed in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ariel Dorfman: Libretto

Ariel Dorfman, born in Argentina and a Chilean expatriate, is the Walter Hayes Research Professor of Literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University. He is a member of the Academie Universelle des Cultures in Paris and has received numerous honorary degrees.

He has been a human rights activist for many years. His books have been translated into over 40 languages and his plays have been performed in over 100 countries.
Plays include:
Widows (New American Plays Award of the Kennedy Center, Winner 1998); Reader (winner of the Roger L Stevens Award of the Kennedy Center 1991); Death and the Maiden (Time Out Award/Best London Play 1991, winner Olivier Award 1992, Best New Play); Speak Truth to Power (Kennedy Center, June 2001) and Purgatorio (Seattle Rep 2005). The Other Side, originally commissioned by The National Theatre of Tokyo in 2003/4, premiered in English at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2005. In 2008 Purgatorio was produced at the Arcola and options taken on Picasso’s Closet, In the Dark and Death and the Maiden for a West End revival.
Films include:
The award-winning documentary A Promise to the Dead, based on Ariel’s memoirs; Heading South, Looking North (broadcast as part of the BBC Storyville strand – made by White Pine Pictures, who optioned the original screenplay Shaheed in 2010); Balmaceda (co-screenwriter, Winner First Prize Chile Films 1973); Death and the Maiden (dir. Roman Polanski); Prisoners in Time (BBC teleplay co-written with Rodrigo Dorfman, winner of Best Feature Film WGGB Awards, 1995); Dead Line (C4 Films, special presentation written with Rodrigo Dorfman and based on Ariel’s poems from his book Last Waltz in Santiago).

In 2008, the opera version of Death and the Maiden, with music by the Swedish composer Jonas Forssell and written by Ariel in verse, premiered at the Malmo Opera House to glowing reviews. Ariel also wrote the book for the musical DANCING SHADOWS, with songs by Eric Woolfson, lead composer and singer of the Alan Parsons Project, which premiered in Seoul in 2007, winning five Korean Music Awards (the equivalent of the Tonys).

This year Ariel Dorfman was invited to give the prestigious 8th Nelson Mandela Lecture in South Africa. He has also had novels, short story collections and poetry collections published and is a regular contributor to broadsheet newspapers worldwide.

Will Conway: Conductor and Musical Director

William Conway was born in Glasgow and studied at both the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and the Royal College of Music where he was a prodigious prize-winner.

He is a founder-member and principal cellist of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and for ten years held the same position with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, performing regularly as soloist and director. He has recorded extensively including, amongst others, the cello concerto specially written for him by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, a disc of music by John Bevan Baker for Linn Records as well as several recital discs.
In 1994 William was a prizewinner at the Leeds Conductors Competition and has since established a dual career as cellist and conductor worldwide. He has conducted most major Scottish orchestras as well as Northern Sinfonia, English Sinfonia, Chamber Orchestra of Europe and the symphony orchestras of Cairo, Zagreb, Antwerp, Phoenix and Göettingen in all repertoires including operas such as Cavelleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, Die Fledermaus, The Martyrdom of St. Magnus by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and The Seer by John Bevan-Baker.

He is also much in demand as a teacher and chamber music coach: he is Head of Strings and Chamber Music at the specialist music school St Mary’s Music School and regularly gives recitals both as a soloist and with piano.

Tina Ellen Lee: Artistic Director/Producer

Tina Ellen Lee FRSA is a singer, actress and producer. She was the General Secretary of The Association of Photographers in London between 1979 and 1988.

She has produced two documentary film series and several separate films with Robert Golden Pictures. She is artistic director of Opera Circus, a successful experimental opera/music theatre company founded in 1991.

Tina has performed in concerts, festival operas, fringe theatre, television commercials and feature films and as a voice over artist. As a performer and producer Tina toured all over the world with Opera Circus in various of the companies productions and has produced all of their work.

From 1986 to the present day Tina has supported the work of Helen Bamber, OBE firstly through The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture and then later through The Helen Bamber Foundation, both as an individual performer and through Opera Circus productions.

The early work of the company with David Glass, Monika Pagneux, Federico Davia and a meeting with Peter Brook, was influential in guiding her artistic direction. The contributions of Frankie Armstrong, Annabel Arden, Marcello Magni, Kathryn Hunter, John Wright and others helped to develop Tina’s skills and artistic direction with the company.

Opera Circus has toured world wide alongside the British Council and independent production companies. She was a co creator of Impropera, the highly successful improvised opera company. With productions such as Shameless, Kill Me I love and King Stag, Tina toured and performed in Peru, Georgia, Thailand, Canada and throughout Europe including Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Bosnia I Herzegovina.

Her production credits include Cat Man’s Tale with music by Alasdair Nicolson and text by David Harrower, Arcane, music by Paul Clark (Clod Ensemble) and text by David Spencer and Differences in Demolition with Nigel Osborne and with text by Goran Simic. Tina works closely with the composer Nigel Osborne and is currently developing Naciketa with Nigel and the writer and playwright Ariel Dorfman in affiliation with Opera North.

She will be producing a gala performance of Differences in Demolition at the Hofberg Palace in Vienna in December 2010, hosted by the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe.

Her work with Nigel Osborne has led her to establish partnerships with other arts organisations and NGO’s in Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria, the Netherlands and Scotland both for the creation of new work and to continue to explore the use of the arts and culture to encourage inter cultural and ethnic understanding. Opera Circus was based in London for fifteen years and is now run from Dorset. This has led to a number of successful community projects in the region devised and created by Tina, including The Incomer and the Land, Screen Bites Dorset’s Food Film Festival of which she was a co founder and the work in progress LUNCH.

Di Sherlock: Director of work in progress performances

Di’s background is in Physical Theatre (Gertrude in Gormenghast). She has worked extensively in repertory, fringe and West End theatre, site specific and multimedia performance including with Barcelona based La Cubana (Nuts Coconuts at Edinburgh International Festival) film and TV (Holby City, Doctors, Crossroads). Writing includes Elizabeth the Virgin Queen (City of London Festival) Liz and Di (Soho Theatre) Inferno (Birmingham University) and Who Killed Ramona Rhapsody – a Musical Murder Mystery (commissioned by BBC Philharmonic, broadcast BBC Radio 3, subsequently produced in Holland and Germany) As Associate Director of The Generating Company (contemporary circus) Di wrote and directed The Bard’s Ball and Putting on the Glitz (site specific in aid of Comic Relief). She directed Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife for Linda Marlowe (premiered 2009 Edinburgh Festival, transferred Trafalgar Studios, followed by 2010 UK tour, directed InVocation for Peta Lily (Colchester Mercury, Tristan Bates Theatre) and is currently writing Salford Tales for BBC Phil as part of their Frankenstein season.

Nadia Malik: Costume

Nadia Malik attained a BA in Textile Design and, after further studies in technical pattern cutting, worked in commercial fashion as a lingerie and nightwear designer for many high street retailers in the UK and in the USA for a number of years. Over this time her passion for costume design grew out of an interest in performance, and in the human body and how it moves. Since leaving the commercial fashion world Nadia has completed an MA in Costume Design for Performance. Her creative costume design work extends from period pieces to character and conceptual pieces within theatre, live art, dance, opera and film, and has also been shown at the National Review of Live Art. Nadia’s strong visual concepts and collaborative approach to performance development allows her to explore her interest in how movement and costume design can facilitate each other to enable clear communication of meaning to an audience.

Nadine Mortimer Smith: Soprano

Surrey born soprano Nadine Mortimer-Smith has studied on the opera courses at City Lit and Morley College as well as with ENO Opera Works at the London Coliseum. Her opera scenes have included Mimì (La Bohème), Elisabetta (Roberto Devereux), Magda (La Rondine), Arabella, Marschallin (Der Rosenkavalier),Tosca and Ellen Orford (Peter Grimes). She was Cio Cio San (cover) and Kate Pinkerton (Madama Butterfly) with Dartington International Summer School and Nadine was delighted to join Dartington again this summer to sing her debut in the role of Countess (Le Nozze di Figaro).

Nadine is currently mentored by the British soprano Dame Josephine Barstow and studies with the Welsh tenor Jeffrey Talbot. In October 2009 Nadine was awarded the prize for the Most Promising Voice at the inaugural Voice of Black Opera Competition, chaired by the legendary Grace Bumbry along with Julian Joseph, Anthony Negus and Philip Herbert.

Her professional operatic work has involved performances on Radio 2 (Tribute to Malcolm McLaren) and in Norway (The African Madonna); Dido (Dido and Aeneas) with the Southbank Sinfonia; Mimì (La Bohème) and Maria Stuarda both with Riverside Opera; Porgy and Bess with Opera de Lyon and the Edinburgh International Festival; Carmen Jones at the Royal Festival Hall and Lost in the Stars at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Nadine devised, produced and performed the soprano role in the opera compilation “Why Don’t You Just Sing Jazz?” for the Grimeborn 09 Festival at the Arcola Theatre. Corporate functions have included the Royal Opera House and S J Berwin.

Nadine is a committed concert recitalist and she recently performed Strauss’ Four Last Songs with Dartington Festival Orchestra conducted by Diego Masson and the European première of John Harbison’s Milosz Songs at the Second American Festival. Nadine is honoured to be joining the American Festival again this year to perform song cycles by Libby Larsen, Previn and Copland with pianist Tomasz Lis.

Future work includes: Four Last Songs with Plymouth Symphony Orchestra; creating the roles of Alicia, Swaharaga and Lucia in a new opera Naciketa by Nigel Osborne with Opera Circus; a performance in Italy of Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and the first recording of the Milosz Songs for voice and piano. www.nadineopera.com

Lore Lixenberg: Mezzo Soprano

Mezzo-soprano Loré Lixenberg is renowned for the warmth, range and agility of her voice as well as her total absorption in any role. Her rich experience in the area of music theatre includes performing the lead role in Bent Sørensen’s opera Under Himlen at the Royal Opera House in Copenhagen as well as performing in many projects with Théâtre de Complicité. She has performed throughout Europe at numerous festivals including Wien Modern, Oslo’s Ultima and the festivals in Salzburg, Lucerne, Edinburgh, Witten, Huddersfield, Donaueschingen and Aldeburgh. Loré has performed as soloist with many distinguished orchestras and ensembles including BBC Symphony Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Orchestra, Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble InterContemporain, London Sinfonietta, Klangforum Wien, BCMG, Cikada, Northern Sinfonia, Ensemble Aventure and Apartment House. Television programmes Loré has featured in include the BBC2 television series Strings, Bows and Bellows, with Joanna MacGregor; the avantgarde comedy series Attention Scum, with performance artist Simon Munnery, also on BBC2; the Channel 4 documentary What made Mozart tick; and Kombat Opera Presents…, a set of six television comedy operas commissioned from Richard Thomas by BBC2. In 2008, she sang the world première of Dai Fujikura’s — as I am — with Ensemble InterContemporain and, a year later, performed the work again, with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2010 Lore will be singing in the premiere of Mark Anthony Turnage’s Anna Nichol Smith. Her busy programme in 2011 includes performing a John Cage programme at Bayreuth.

Darren Abrahams: Tenor

arren was born in Brighton on the south coast of England and has been singing all his life. His great passion is performance and he is fascinated by theatre of all kinds. He made his first theatrical appearances in musicals and sang his way through school in amateur productions of classic shows like Hello Dolly, Fiddler on the Roof and My Fair Lady.

Having well and truly caught the theatre bug he went to university to study drama and spent the next few years becoming acquainted with Shakespeare and Brecht and taking classes in directing and physical theatre. He fully intended becoming a working actor appearing in plays and musicals when he graduated, but life had other ideas. Spending most of his first year as a professional performer working as a temp at Brentford Social Services, he found he was up for anything and when a director he knew offered him a small part in a quirky madrigal opera he jumped at the chance. In those days the opera world was crying out for young tenors, so Darren’s second year as a professional performer was spent singing in the chorus for small opera companies. Since finding work in opera seemed so easy and the West End wasn’t calling, Darren decided to try his luck at the Royal Academy of Music to see if he could extend his vocal skills and officially add opera to his list of talents. Luckily the RAM was willing to help and he was accepted onto the Post Grad. Vocal Course where he spent a happy year learning about classical composers, singing opera and moonlighting in the music theatre department. A year later Darren entered the Joint Royal Colleges Opera Department and after two more years of study was accepted into the National Opera Studio, finally graduating in the year 2000 as a fully formed opera singer.

Since then, Darren has appeared in opera all over the UK and on the continent. His roles have included Dorvil in La Scala di Seta, Piféar in Adam’s Si J’étais Roi (Wexford Festival), Alessandro Il Re Pastore, Bastien Bastien und Bastienne (Classical Opera), Ottavio (ETO), Ferrando (Mid Wales Opera), Tamino (OTC), Leo Family Matters (Tête à Tête), The Count of Almaviva The Barber of Seville (Savoy Opera), Frontino L’Equivoco Stravagante, Ernesto Don Pasquale (Garsington Opera). Iopas The Trojans, Shepherd / Spirit Orfeo (ENO), Molqi The Death of Klinghoffer (Scottish Opera / Edinburgh Int. Festival. From 2002 to 2004 Darren appeared at the Batignano Festival in Italy, singing Tracolin in Adam’s Le Toréador, Ritornello in Gassmann’s L’Opera Seria and Il Pulitore in La Dama ed il Pulitore di Damasco, a new opera written by Jonathan Dove for Darren’s voice. Recently he has had an association with The Opera Group and the Young Vic Theatre, playing Tobias in Jonathan Dove’s Tobias and the Angel, a new production to reopen the theatre; the central role of Christoph Schmalhans in a new opera The Shops by Edward Rushton; and Daniel Buchanan in Kurt Weill’s Street Scene which won the Evening Standard Award for best musical in 2008. Other work has included Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in Bologna, Don Ramiro in WNO’s 2007 production of La Cenerentola, Florville in Il Signor Bruschino for the 2008 Wexford Festival and this year Pirelli in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd in Bologna, Lugo, Modena, Piacenza and Bolzano. Darren is often asked to workshop new operas and has worked for The Royal Opera, The Genesis Project, Almeida Opera, The Opera Group, Tête à Tête, Opera Circus, The Brian Irvine Ensemble, American Opera Project and Complicité creating new work. He has a busy concert diary and regularly sings oratorio and recitals. International concert appearances have included performances with the LPO, the Royal Seville Symphony, the St Petersburg Symphony, the Houston Symphony and The King’s Consort. In the UK he regularly sings with the Derby Singers with whom he has a long and happy association. Darren is part of a duo with award winning pianist Lindy Tennent-Brown, creating cabaret and recitals combining all the different styles of music they love – from Abba to Bellini and everything in between. They are most excited by opportunities to respond to works of art and will be singing their first major concert at Salthouse 09, a contemporary arts festival held in the Mediaeval church of Salthouse on the North Norfolk coast. www.darrenabrahams.com www.circularsounds.org

Andy Morton: Tenor

Andy Morton lives in Bristol and is a regular performer in Impropera with Anthony Ingle. More orthodox roles include Ecclitico in The World on the Moon for Opera East, Eisenstein in Die Fledermaus for Opera della Luna, Canio and Turiddu in Cav and Pag for Lakeland Opera and Fenton in Falstaff for Music Theatre London and Capriol Films. He performed the role of Balakin in The Enchantress for Grange Park Opera, and Ralph Rackstraw in HMS Pinafore for Opera della Luna at Buxton Opera House, for whom he also played Paris in La Belle Hélene and Nanki Poo in The Mikado. He also played Remendado in Carmen for Garden Opera in Kenya and Nemorino in L‘Elisir for Pegasus Opera. He previously created the roles of Jole and Balkan in Nigel Osborne’s Bosnian-inspired Differences in Demolition for Opera Circus at the London Festival. Other contemporary roles he has performed include Bill Dayton for English National Opera, Joe the Fossil Hunter in the World Premiere of Graham Treacher’s Darwin’s Dream at the Royal Albert Hall, Professor Winklebeam in Pinocchio for the Royal Opera House, as the lead man in Battersea Arts Centre’s notorious gay thriller Black and Blue, Lore Lixenberg’s Glass Hotel also at BAC, Cage’s Europa 5 and Maxwell Davies’ classic Eight Songs for a Mad King at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow. He has sung as a lead soloist with a number of leading contemporary ensembles including the Hebrides Ensemble, Paragon Ensemble and the Fibonacci Sequence and has collaborated on new works from Complicite’s A Dog’s Heart to The Aspern Papers (Helen Porter) for The Royal Opera House. In musical theatre, he has appeared in the West End in Les Misérables (Jean Valjean) in Boy George’s Taboo and on national tour with Martin Guerre and Jerry Springer the Opera. His other credits include Riff (West Side Story), Macheath (The Beggar’s Opera), The Sailor (Dido and Aeneas) at Holland Park, Serano (La Donna del Lago) for Midsummer Opera at St. John’s Smith Square, Bardolph (Falstaff) for Pegasus Opera and Basilio (Figaro) for English Pocket Opera.

Mark Meadows: Baritone

Mark made his professional debut at the Merkin Hall, New York at the age of 20, performing Ligeti’s Aventures and Nouvelles Aventures. Having joined the internationally renowned vocal group The Swingle Singers, Mark subsequently became Musical Director and wrote around 50 vocal and orchestral arrangements for the group. He has performed with several of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony (under Pierre Boulez), Berlin Philharmonic (Semyon Bychkov), Royal Amsterdam Concertgebouw (Luciano Berio), London Philharmonic and Toronto Symphony (Jukka-Pekka Saraste); also Mark made a Deutsche Gramaphon recording of Berio’s Sinfonia with Peter Eötvös and the Gothenburg Symphony. Small ensemble work includes The Consort of Musicke with Anthony Rooley. Mark has also appeared as a soloist on broadcast recordings of Candide, Company, The Good Companions, Pal Joey and On Your Toes, with The BBC Concert Orchestra for Radio 3. Mark’s acting credits include King Lear, Six Pictures of Lee Miller and 5/11 (all Chichester Festival Theatre), Look Back in Anger and A Streetcar Named Desire (Bristol Old Vic), A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre), Longitude (Greenwich Theatre), Mary Poppins (Prince Edward Theatre), Wonderful Town (Grange Park Opera) and High Society (Crucible, Sheffield). He has appeared on film in Nicholas Nickleby and High Heels and Lowlifes; on TV in Eastenders, Casualty and Doctors. Broadcasting work also includes numerous plays and readings for Radio 3 and Radio 4.

Prakriti Dutta: Indian Classical singer

Prakriti Dutta has distinguished herself as one of the most promising Dhrupad (oldest existing Indian Classical music tradition) vocalists of her generation. She is the only daughter of Jogesh Dutta who pioneered mime in India. Prakriti`s journey into the world of Indian classical music started with her mother Suchita Dutta, herself a well-known singer .She started her formal talim (training) at a tender age under Dhrupad maestro Ustad Nasir Aminuddin Dagar and legendary vocalist Pandit A. Kanan and further honed her skilled under the accomplished trainer Gour Saran Dasgupta.

She secured first place in Dhrupad contest organized by State Music Academy of West Bengal in 1995. She also secured first position in M.A in Dhrupad from Rabindra Bharati University of West-Bengal, India and received the “Acarya Uday Bhushan Bhattacharya Smriti Purashkar” in 2000. She has started her advanced training under Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar at his Gurukul ( ancient system of art school in India) organized by Indian Institute Of Technology, Mumbai. Her debut as a dhrupad singer was highly appreciated by press and public on 3rd March, 2003 at Rabindra Sadan the nation auditorium of the city Kolkata. She worked as a music teacher with The Heritage School and Delhi Public School Megacity Kolkata.

She is presently going through a Postgraduate Research Programme from University of Edinburgh on Indian Music Therapy for Mentally Challenged Children and also regularly teaching music at The Scottish Academy of Asian Arts and Sense Scotland. Prakriti has two Dhrupad albums in her credit and she extensively toured in the European countries like France, Spain, United Kingdom, and Belgium.
www.prakritidutta.com

Anthony Ingle: Repetiteur and Musical Director Opera Circus

Anthony Ingle has been musical director of Opera Circus since 2002, and pianist and musical director of Impropera, the world’s only established free-improvisation opera company (which began as an Opera Circus project) since 1997. He has composed over sixty scores for music-theatre works of all kinds, and is also director of music for productions at LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), a post he has held for many years. As MD of Opera Circus, he worked on the world première of Nigel Osborne’s previous opera, Differences in Demolitions; he is now editing that score for publication.

Simon Thacker: Guitars

Simon has attracted the highest acclaim wherever he has performed, from Scotland to Havana, London to Andalucía. His technical virtuosity and emotionally charged interpretations have established him as one of Britain’s most exciting classical performers.

Simon was recently appointed Honorary Fellow in Music at the University of Aberdeen and is currently Head of Guitar at Edinburgh Napier University. He holds an MMus with Distinction from the RSAMD and first class BMus(Hons) from Napier University.
He was recently nominated for the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artist Music Award, the highest recognition for live classical music-making in the UK and in 2006 was a winner of the 50th Park Lane Group Young Artist Awards, resulting in his acclaimed debut at the Purcell Room, Royal Festival Hall, London.

Recent solo performances have taken him to Andalucía, Spain and Massachusetts, USA, where he will be returning next season.
Simon is the founder of Camerata Ritmata, a cross genre collaboration with three of the UK’s leading jazz musicians, which he composes for. He performs with All Angels’ singing star Daisy Chute, both in unique duo programmes and with Camerata Ritmata.
He is also a member of the highly successful duo ¡Canto vivo! with soprano Claire Debono. Performances include: In Tune, BBC Radio 3; Ambassadorial Concert, Malta’s National Theatre; LSO St. Lukes, London. Future recitals include Lille and Brussels.
In 2002 Simon gave a series of concerts in Havana, Cuba, for audiences that included Ramon Castro, brother of Fidel, and Cuba’s greatest composer Leo Brouwer, as well as on live TV.
He recently led his innovative East/West project The Nava Rasa Ensemble, featuring nine of the UK’s finest Indian and Western classical musicians, on an acclaimed Scottish Arts Council Tune Up tour. A CD of a concerto by Indian composer Shirish Korde and a work for guitar concertante by Edinburgh University Reid Professor Nigel Osborne commissioned for the project was released in mid 2010.

Simon is currently developing several unique new projects which will continue to showcase the guitar in groundbreaking ways and forge new musical genres.
www.simonthacker.com http://www.myspace.com/navarasaensemble

Sarvar Sabri: Tabla

Sarvar Sabri is an internationally renowned tabla player / composer whose versatility, and passion for the rich diversity of the world’s musical traditions, has spurred him to constantly experiment with other world-class musicians and composers, and to extend the boundaries of his own classical form.

Sabri is proficient not only as a soloist but also works with many Indian classical vocalists, instrumentalists and Kathak dancers. His strength and distinguishing feature is his versatility, he is able to accompany a range of artforms, showing awareness and sensitivity to the different styles required. He regularly participates in major music festivals held in India. He makes regular appearances at the South Bank, London and has also performed for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 including the South Bank Show. He also appeared BBC Live 2000 at the International Convention Centre (Birmingham) for a concert organised by the BBC to celebrate the millennium.
www.sarvarsabri.com

Robert Golden:Film/Photography

Robert Golden won more awards for his photographs than any other high school student in the United States. He was further educated at the University of Michigan where he was active in the anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights movements. While earning his BA in History and BS in Design he studied, for a year, at the London School of Film Technique.

After working in New York for magazines and record companies he moved to Spain and then to London and worked as a photojournalist, producing numerous photo-essays and eleven photo-documentary books for which he won Britain’s first non-racist book publishing award.

Protesting against the way his documentary images were used by editors Robert turned to the ‘innocence’ of still life and specialised in food and drink subjects. This led to a career as a commercials director and then to feature and documentary films.

Between 1999 and 2004 Robert worked on two documentary series of 26 episodes called the SAVOURING SERIES which have sold to more than 30 territories. www.robertgoldenpictures.com www.objectivecinema.net

The Music for Naciketa By Nigel Osborne

Naciketa is a crucial step forward for me in a line of operas where I have tried to integrate modernist and traditional music languages in the service of an innovative music theatre.

“Differences in Demolition”, my recent work for Opera Circus for example, drew closely on the Balkan tradition of Sevdah, itself an extraordinary natural integration of Turkish, Arabic, South East European and Central European influences. In the short opera “The Queens of Govan” for Scottish Opera I collaborated with the great sarod player Vajahat Khan and writer Suhayl Saadi in a portrait of young Asians torn between cultures in twenty-first century Glasgow. To create the language of “The Piano Tuner”, commissioned by Music Theatre Wales/ROH, I travelled to North Thailand/Myanmar to work with the musicians of remote Shan/Tai Yai tribes.

In each case I have tried not to be a thief in the night – to work in a sustained and conscientious way with traditional musicians (I have sung Sevdah for over 40 years, and studied Indian music for almost 50), and indeed to seek permission and support from key practitioners within the cultures. The libretto for “Naciketa” is doubly significant in this sense. Not only is it located among traditional musics I am closely connected with, but also has a storyline that takes place among some communities I have intimate familiarity with as an aid worker.

The opera is based on an episode of the Upanishads, and I have used a recent commission for Simon Thacker and Nava Rasa to help further develop an “Indian modernist” language that also draws on technical resources deep in both Hindustani and Carnatic traditions. This language is now ready to generate the core of the work. The action of the libretto is also located in East Africa.

I have for some years worked with a group comprising musicians from the Uganda Dance Academy and London Sinfonietta where we have developed an “African modernist” language which has been warmly received, surprisingly, in both Kampala and the UK.(The group opened the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference in Kampala in 2007). I have subsequently written instrumental works drawing upon this experience, including “Rock Music” which was performed during the celebrations for the opening of Kings Place in 2008. I have also worked on therapeutic programmes among child soldiers in North Uganda.

Finally the action of the libretto moves to South America. Once again, I have a long association with protest song in Chile, and with contemporary Latin traditions of the region, ranging from bossa nova to candomble jeje. This may sound dangerously like musical world tourism, but I have confidence that I am (after all these years) eventually ready to pull these strands of my life and musical experience together to create am intimate operatic theatre that has its own integral organism, sound and identity.

NACIKETA – HOPE AND MUSIC
I have always wanted to find a way of placing music as a source of hope, place it in the very middle and at the very core of one of my writings. NACIKETA is the response to that quest. The child-protagonist of this epic/opera must confront three of the deepest challenges to humanity in our time: girls who have been sold into prostitution, boys who have been recruited as soldiers, children who have been orphaned by war and tyranny.

In each case, Naciketa is assisted by a song, it is music that literally rescues him in the worst moment, consoles him and his fellow boys and girls, forms a bridge toward a different sort of future. It is the openness of those torn and betrayed children to listen to and sing the same song with Naciketa that gives them hope that there can, in fact, be a world as lovely as the music that surrounds and comforts them. Music becomes, therefore, the hidden hero of the work that we are creating with Nigel Osborne.

As in The Magic Flute, the melodies and harmonies that the characters intone are ways out of sorrow and fear. In the case of the abused children who people our epic/opera, the music allows them to renew their trust in a humanity that they share and yet from which they have been so cruelly excluded. And at the end, when Naciketa himself must face the Death he has been fooling and warding off, the Death from which he has been protecting the other children, it is with a final song that he takes the ultimate journey, it is with music that he defies extinction. I love it that, in the final scene of our epic/opera, even Death sings along; I love it that all the characters join Naciketa in that concluding, conclusive chorus.

Because music was there at the start of our humanity, was there, some say, at the origin of language, as the first agreement with the elements that our species needed, the first understanding of how w are to survive. Some would say, and I would concur, that music was there before humanity rose and sang of sunsets and sunrises. Some would say music was there at the origin of the sun and the stars that make the universe turn. Some would say that it was in the hope that there would be music that the universe created itself. So it would not be lonely. So we would not entirely die.