Eight Songs for a Mad King

GEOFFREY PATERSON, CONDUCTOR

Geoffrey Paterson studied at Cambridge University and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, taking composition lessons with Alexander Goehr and participating in conducting masterclasses with Pierre Boulez. He won First Prize at the 2009 Leeds Conductors Competition.

He works regularly at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where he was a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme, assisting conductors including Antonio Pappano, Mark Elder, Andris Nelsons and Daniele Gatti on an extensive repertoire. For two seasons he worked in Bayreuth as musical assistant to Kirill Petrenko for Der Ring des Nibelungen.

For the ROH he has conducted Le Portrait de Manon and several world premières. He has also conducted at Opera North (La bohème), the Royal Danish Opera (Porgy and Bess and The Nutcracker), Glyndebourne (Followers and Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Iford Festival Opera (Don Giovanni and La Vie Parisienne), Aldeburgh and Holland festivals (The Corridor and The Cure) and the Buxton and Bregenz festivals (Gloria von Jaxtberg).

He regularly works with the London Sinfonietta, and other recent concert appearances include the Manchester Camerata, Hamburg Symphony Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. He has recorded for NMC with the London Sinfonietta and for BBC Radio 3 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

MICHAEL MCCARTHY, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

I co-founded Music Theatre Wales in 1988, and as Artistic Director I want the company to stay at the forefront of new opera in Wales, the UK and beyond. Alongside MTW, from 1998-2012 I was Artistic Director of Operatoriet - the contemporary opera studio for Norway, and from 2007 – 2012 I was Dramaturg for FIVE:15 - Operas Made in Scotland for Scottish Opera. In 2012 I led the Opera Creation Academy at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. In the 1980s I was fortunate to work as revival director for The Fires of London, the company run by Peter Maxwell Davies.

I have staged over 40 contemporary operas and worked on more than 100 new works. Other productions include large-scale outdoor stagings of Tosca and Nabucco, and productions of La Traviata, Cosi fan Tutte, Il Re Pastore, Fidelio and Don Giovanni. Also, Cinderella by Peter Maxwell Davies for WNO and S4C Television, The Lighthouse for BBC2 TV and The Forbidden Hymn - a community opera in the South Wales Valleys. Future plans include the USA premiere of The Trial by Philip Glass in St Louis following performances in Scotland, and future productions for Music Theatre Wales.

In January 2015 I was awarded Best Director at the Wales Theatre Awards for my world premiere production of The Trial by Philip Glass for Music Theatre Wales. My production of Greek won Outstanding Achievement in Opera at the TMA Awards. I was honoured with an MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours in 2016.

Caroline Finn, Co-Director

Born in England, Caroline Finn attended the Arts Educational School, Tring and then the Juilliard School, New York, where she attained her BFA in dance. As a dancer, Caroline has performed with Ballett Theatre Munich under the direction of Philip Taylor; Ballet Preljocaj (France) and Compagnie Carolyn Carlson (France). Caroline Finn has been a freelance dancer and choreographer since 2009. She has created work for companies such as Tanz Luzerner Theatre (Switzerland); The National Ballet of Chile, Cross Connection Ballet (Denmark); Compagnie DIEM (France) and Teatr Groteska (Poland). Caroline has presented her works worldwide at festivals in South Korea, Japan, Berlin, and Paris amongst others. Awarded the Matthew Bourne New Adventures Choreographer Award 2014, she was then commissioned to create ‘Bloom’ for Phoenix Dance Theatre.

Caroline is Resident Choreographer for NDCWales. She has created four new pieces for the company including Folk and The Green House.

SIMON BANHAM, DESIGNER

Simon has a long working relationship with Music Theatre Wales, most recently the World Premiere of Philip Glass’ new opera The Trial. Before this he designed the British Premiere of Luci Mie Traditrici and Greek (Outstanding Achievement in Opera 2011).

He is a founder member of the theatre company Quarantine, and is responsible for the scenography on all their productions over the past 18 years. Most recently Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring, a quartet of works performed over one day, and Wallflower a durational piece seeking to remember every dance ever danced.

Recently he has begun collaborating with Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes on a body of work with National Theatre Wales - The Persians (Best Design 2010 award by the TMA) and Coriolan/us, (chosen for exhibition at the World Stage Design 2013), and The Iliad.

Simon currently teaches at Aberystwyth University, Wales, where he is the Reader in Scenography and Theatre Design.

ACE MCCARRON, LIGHTING DESIGNER

Ace McCarron is a freelance lighting designer based in Cardiff. Through work with such companies as The Fires of London, Music Theatre Wales and the Operastudio Vlaanderen he has designed lighting for many contemporary operas. He is also known for work with many new-writing companies, and with children’s and black theatre companies. He has been a member of Howard Barker’s company The Wrestling School since 1989 and lit their eight-hour-long production The Ecstatic Bible at the Adelaide Festival.

Recent operatic engagements include: The Devil Inside and In the Locked Room/Ghost Patrol – world premieres and co-productions between Music Theatre Wales and Scottish Opera, The Trial by Philip Glass – world premiere, Greek (last seen at the Tongyeong Music Festival), Eight Songs for a Mad King, The Killing Flower (Sciarrino’s Luci mie traditrici), The Golden Dragon (Music Theatre Wales); Elle est Moi et Tote Mich, (Operastudio Vlaanderen); Orlando Paladino (Wiener Kammeroper); The Fairy Queen (Istanbul Music Festival); Waar is Mijn Zeil? (Muziektheater Transparent).

With composer Guy Harries, he won the inaugural Flourish award for an adaptation of Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka.

Joe Fletcher, Lighting

Joe is a freelance theatre designer specialising in lighting and scenography for theatre, dance, events and architecture. He spent time as Technical Director and Resident Designer for Sydney Dance Company and National Dance Company Wales, working with choreographers Ohad Naharin, Christopher Bruce, Rafael Bonachela & Angelin Preljocaj. Joe’s lighting and video design for Purlieus (National Dance Company Wales) was selected as a finalist at the World Stage Design Exhibition 2013, and was one of the Telegraph’s top 15 highlights.

Find out more about Joe’s work here: www.joefletcherdesign.co.uk

GUTO PUW, COMPOSER

Guto Pryderi Puw studied Music at Bangor University under composers John Pickard, Pwyll ap Siôn and Andrew Lewis, gaining his MMus in 1996 and later his PhD in Composition in 2002. He was appointed as a full member of staff in 2006 lecturing mainly on Composition and Contemporary Music and was appointed as Head of Composition in 2015.

He first came to prominence after winning the Composer’s Medal at the National Eisteddfod in 1995 and for the second time in 1997. His music has been featured in many festivals around the UK and broadcast regularly on Radio and television. In February 2006 he became the inaugural Resident Composer with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, with his Concerto for Oboe winning the Listeners’ Award category at the British Composer Awards in 2007 and ‘…onyt agoraf y drws…’ (‘unless I open the door’) being premiered at the Proms during the same year. Y Tŵr (‘The Tower’) based on the play by Gwenlyn Parry and with libretto by Gwyneth Glyn will be his first chamber opera. Future commissions include a second violin concerto, a string quartet and a large orchestral work.

A selection of his recent orchestral works was released on the CD Reservoirs by Signum Records in 2014. He also received the Sir Geraint Evans Award by the Welsh Music Guild for ‘his significant contribution to Welsh music’ in 2014. For many years Puw has been active in the promotion of new music in north Wales through his involvement with the Bangor Music Festival, being its founding member and Artistic Director since 2000.

GWYNETH GLYN, LIBRETTIST

Gwyneth Glyn is a poet, writer and singer-songwriter who lives in Cricieth, North Wales. She was Welsh Poet Laureate for Children 2006-2007 and has written extensively for theatre in Wales, including pieces for Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, Bara Caws, Y Frân Wen, De Oscuro and Music Theatre Wales’ production of Stori’r Milwr/The Soldier’s Tale. She writes regularly for Welsh soap opera Pobol y Cwm. She has performed internationally at WOMEX, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Washington DC, and at Folk Alliance International in Kansas City. In 2015 she supported Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita on his UK tour, and recently collaborated with musicians from Mumbai on an album called Ghazalaw, which weaves Welsh folk songs with Indian Ghazal. She is currently recording her next solo album.

Find out more about Gwyneth here: http://gwynethglyn.com/

RICHARD BAKER, CONDUCTOR

Richard Baker is a leading figure on the British contemporary music scene as one of the foremost composer-conductors of his generation. He studied composition in the Netherlands with Louis Andriessen and in London with John Woolrich, and first drew significant attention with two early works - Los Rábanos (1998) and Learning to Fly (1999). Hommagesquisse, typically characterful and inventive, was commissioned by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group – with whom Richard also has a strong relationship as conductor – to mark Pierre Boulez’s visit to that city in 2008. In 2010 Baker’s music was featured in the Philharmonia’s Music of Today series, and the same year he wrote Gaming, a substantial chamber work for cello, marimba and piano, to a commission from the New York-based trio Real Quiet. His second BCMG commission, The Tyranny of Fun, was premiered in February 2013, and led Andrew Clements of the Guardian to comment on ‘how assured Baker’s ensemble writing is, and how vividly it fleshes out its structural frame’. The work was short-listed for a Royal Philharmonic Society Award last year. Three chamber pieces had their premieres in 2015/16, works for solo piano, solo harp, and a string trio. He also wrote a new work for BCMG to conclude their season.

As a conductor, Richard works regularly with the leading composers of our day. In autumn 2012, he led English Touring Opera's admired production of Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse and, in spring 2013, conducted the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe's double-bill of Handel's The Triumph of Time and Truth and Gerald Barry's The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit. The 2012-13 season also saw his debuts with both the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and BBC National Orchestra of Wales, adding to existing relationships with ensembles including the London Sinfonietta, BCMG, Britten Sinfonia, Composers Ensemble and Apartment House. In spring 2014, he conducted a double-bill of new works by Francisco Coll and Elspeth Brooke at Aldeburgh, the Linbury Studio (Royal Opera House) and Opera North. (‘the wonderfully assured conducting of Richard Baker’ Guy Damman, Times). He was immediately reinvited for the Spring 2015 production of The Virtues of Things by Matt Rogers, and invited again last season to conduct the enormously successful world premiere of 4:48 Psychosis by Phil Venables, based on the play by Sarah Kane.

SAMAL BLAK, DESIGNER

Born in the Faroe Islands, Samal trained at the Central St. Martins College of Art & Design and won the 2009 Linbury Prize for Stage Design. Samal’s work was chosen to represent the UK as part of the ‘Make/Believe: UK Design for Performance 2011-2015′ exhibition at the V&A, previously at the Prague Quadrennial.

Productions include: HAMLET (Gothenburg Opera); OTELLO (nominated for the 2010 RPS music award for Opera and music theatre), KHOVANSHCHINA (Winner – Best New Production, International Opera Awards 2015) and LIFE IS A DREAM - world premiere (Birmingham Opera Company); FALSTAFF and FIDELIO (Bucharest National Opera); THE DEVIL INSIDE (nominated for Outstanding Achievement in opera at the UK Theatre Awards 2016), IN THE LOCKED ROOM and GHOST PATROL (winner- South Bank Sky Arts Award 2013) – world premieres, (Scottish Opera and Music Theatre Wales); LES MAMELLES DE TIRESIAS (De Nationale Opera Amsterdam, La Monnaie Brussels, Aldeburgh Music, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence); TOSCA (Opera Ostfold, Norway); EUGENE ONEGIN (Theater an der Wien-in der kammeroper); GIASONE, AGRIPPINA, SIMON BOCCANEGRA, THE SIEGE OF CALAIS, COSI FAN TUTTE (ETO); L’INCORONAZIONE DI POPPEA (RCM, ETO); MACBETH (Geurilla Theatre Seoul); HOW TO BE AN OTHER WOMAN (Gate Theatre, London).

In 2007 he was awarded the Thorvald Poulsen av Steinum award.

For more information go to http://samalblak.com

STUART MACRAE, Composer

Stuart says:

‘When I read Treasure Island as a boy I found real fascination in the characters and the situations. There is a vividness about the way Robert Louis Stevenson told tales, the basic human emotions and relationships which are easy for people to understand. I want this quality in the opera.

I want to evoke lots of different emotions through the music. It won’t be too heavy, although it has dark moments, and not too light-hearted although it has moments of joy. Each of the seven scenes has a different musical sound world where the music portrays the overall atmosphere as well as the emotions of the characters. Each scene becomes a musical entity in its own right, identifying time, location and emotional state, creating a series of different worlds each with a unique musical location and flavour.’

Born in Inverness, Stuart MacRae is one of the most distinctive composers of his generation, writing music of elemental power and emotional subtlety. His works include a Violin Concerto (2001), Hamartia for cello and ensemble (2004) and Gaudete for soprano and orchestra (2008), all of which have been performed at the BBC Proms. His music often draws on structures and images of nature, characters from myth and the poetry of Ted Hughes, of which Gaudete is a large-scale setting.

Works for the stage include the opera The Assassin Tree (2006) to a libretto by Simon Armitage, and the dance-opera Echo and Narcissus (2007). He has collaborated with librettist Louise Welsh on two previous operas: Remembrance Day (2009), part of Scottish Opera’s Five:15 Operas Made in Scotland project; and Ghost Patrol (2012), a co-production between Scottish Opera and Music Theatre Wales. Ghost Patrol won a South Bank Sky Arts Award and was shortlisted for an Olivier Award.

Stuart’s music has been performed regularly at the Linbury Studio of the Royal Opera House and the Edinburgh International Festival, and by ensembles including the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, London Sinfonietta, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Ensemble and Hebrides Ensemble, as well as numerous orchestras in the UK and abroad.

Stuart was Composer in Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra from 1999 to 2003. He was resident composer at the Spannungen Kammermusikfest in Heimbach, Germany in 2003, and Edinburgh Festival Creative Fellow at the University of Edinburgh from 2005 to 2006. From 2006 to 2007 he was a resident composer at Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg, Germany. He teaches composition at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and at Edinburgh University.

Recent projects include Parable, a setting of Wilfred Owen’s poetry commissioned by Hebrides Ensemble. He is currently working on a new piece for the Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, and a second piano sonata for pianist Simon Smith.

Find out more about Stuart here.

Louise Welsh, Librettist

Louise Welsh is the author of seven novels, most recently Death is a Welcome Guest (John Murray 2015). She has written many short stories and articles and is the author of three plays. She has edited volumes of prose and poetry, and contributed to various journals and anthologies. She is the editor of Yonder Awa, a collection of poetry on the theme of Scotland and the North Atlantic slave trade by Scottish and Caribbean writers, and Ghost, a collection of one hundred ghost stories from Pliny the Younger to James Robertson (Head of Zeus 2015).

She has presented over 30 features for BBC Radio, including Hellfire Nation (BBC Radio Scotland), Bannockburn Begins (BBC Radio 3) and Welsh’s Scottish Journey (BBC Radio 4).

Other radio appearances include BBC Radio 4: Open Book, A Good Read, Saturday Review, Front Row, Woman’s Hour; BBC Radio 3: The Verb, Night Waves; BBC Radio Scotland: The Culture Café, Fred McAulay Show, Breaking the News.

Louise has received numerous awards and international fellowships, including an Honorary Doctor of Arts from Edinburgh Napier University and an Honorary Fellowship from the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.

She has collaborated with composer Stuart MacRae on two previous operas: Remembrance Day, part of Scottish Opera’s Five:15 Operas Made in Scotland project, and Ghost Patrol, a co-production between Scottish Opera and Music Theatre Wales. Ghost Patrol won a South Bank Sky Arts Award and was shortlisted for an Olivier Award.

In 2014 Louise was co-founder and director (with Jude Barber of Collective Architecture) of the Empire Café, an award-winning, multi-disciplinary exploration of Scotland’s relationship with the North Atlantic slave trade. The project was included in Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games Cultural Programme.

She is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.

Michael Rafferty, Conductor

After a short career as a research physicist, Michael Rafferty switched to music initially as a violinist and later as conductor. He is co-founder and Joint Artistic Director of Music Theatre Wales and has conducted all its productions. Other conducting has included performances with the BBC Concert Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Orchestre Symphonique de Mulhouse, Norway’s BIT 20 Ensemble, Musikfabrik of Cologne, The Composers’ Ensemble and PM Music Ensemble. Altogether, he has conducted the works of more than 80 living composers and 40 opera productions.

Many of his performances have been broadcast on radio and TV and he has made several CDs - most recently, Michael Berkeley’s opera For You released on Signum Classics and In the Penal Colony, released on Philip Glass’s own label Orange Mountain Music. In November 2010 he was awarded a prestigious Arts Council of Wales Creative Wales Award. In the 2016 New Year Honours he was awarded MBE for services to music in Wales.

Find out more about Michael here.

MATTHEW RICHARDSON, DIRECTOR

Matthew Richardson was born in England. He trained and worked in theatre in New Zealand before returning to the UK. Scottish Opera engagements: Ghost Patrol (also for Music Theatre Wales– world premiere), Rigoletto, Five:15 2010, The Tales of Hoffmann, Jenůfa.

Operatic engagements include: Poet and Prophetess by Mats Larsson Gothe (NorrlandsOperan Sweden, Cape Town); Macbeth (Malmö); Turandot, The Cunning Little Vixen, Fortunato, A Midsummer Night‘s Dream (NorrlandsOperan); Boris Godunov, Rigoletto (New Zealand Opera); The Marriage of Figaro (BBC Television); L’altra Euridice by Jonathan Dove, Ariadne by Elena Langer (Almeida Opera); Oedipus by Qu Xiao Song (Folkoperan Stockholm); Line of Terror by Ian McQueen (Almeida Festival); Faust, Macbeth, Eis Thanaton by John Tavener (Birmingham Opera Company); Apollo and Daphne, Rodelinda, Euridice (Batignano Italy).

PETER EÖTVÖS, Composer

Peter Eötvös is one of the most exciting and theatrical composers at work today. He has a back catalogue of 10 operatic works, many of which are performed around the world though only three have been seen in the UK. We attended the world premiere of The Golden Dragon in 2014 and were thrilled by the vitality and virtuosity of the score and the joyous theatricality of the piece. For our new production, Eötvös has created a new English language version, including some exciting re-working of his original score.

Philip Glass, Composer

The phrases ‘cult following’ and ‘contemporary classical composer’ rarely appear in the same sentence, but Philip Glass is a case in point.

One of the world’s most popular living composers he is acclaimed for his operas, symphonies, film scores, compositions for his own ensemble, and collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen to David Bowie. He has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times and garnered a wide and hugely loyal fan base along the way.

Born in Baltimore in 1937, Philip Glass discovered music in his father’s radio repair shop. In addition to servicing radios, Ben Glass carried a line of records and, when certain ones sold poorly, he would take them home and play them for his three children, trying to discover why they didn’t appeal to customers. These happened to be recordings of the great chamber works, and the future composer rapidly became familiar with Beethoven quartets, Schubert sonatas, Shostakovich symphonies and other music then considered “offbeat.” It was not until he was in his upper teens that Glass began to encounter more “standard” classics.

The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” His music is based on the repetition of brief, elegant melodic fragments that weave in and out like an aural tapestry. In his music, the listener is “immersed in a sort of sonic weather that surrounds, twists, turns, develops”.

There is nothing “minimalist” about his output. In the past 25 years alone he has composed over 20 operas, eight symphonies, six concertos, string quartets, film scores, and a growing body of work for solo piano and organ.

Among his best known works are the operas Einstein on the Beach, The Voyage and Satyagraha (the acclaimed ENO production was a sell-out) and the film scores Koyaanisqati, The Thin Blue Line, Notes on a Scandal, The Hours (winner of a BAFTA) and The Truman Show which won a Golden Globe Award.

Christopher Hampton, Composer

Christopher Hampton is a British playwright, screen writer, film director and producer.

He is best known for his play based on the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses and the film version Dangerous Liaisons (1988) and more recently, the screenplay for the film adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Atonement. As well as this he has an extraordinary catalogue of adaptations, libretti, translations, TV and movie scripts, film production and original plays to his name.

Christopher became involved in theatre while studying French and German at Oxford University, and wrote a play in his first year. The Royal Court’s subsequent production was so successful that it transferred to the Comedy Theatre while he was still a student, making him the youngest writer ever to have a play performed in the West End - a record which still stands. He said at the time that he also hoped to become the oldest writer to have a play in the West End, an ambition he has yet to achieve.

His plays, musicals and translations have so far garnered four Tony Awards, three Olivier Awards, four Evening Standard Awards and the New York Theatre Critics’ Circle Award; prizes for his film and television work include an Oscar, two BAFTAs, a Writers’ Guild of America Award, the Prix Italia, a Special Jury Award at the Cannes Film Festival, Hollywood Screenwriter of the Year, and The Collateral Award at the Venice Film Festival for Best Literary Adaptation.

Christopher Hampton and Philip Glass have worked together before: Glass wrote the score for 1996 film adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, written and directed by Hampton, whilst Hampton wrote librettos for Glass’s opera Waiting for the Barbarians (2005), based on the novel by J M Coetzee and for Appomattox, set against the backdrop of the American Civil War (2007), a revised version of which was presented by the National Opera in Washington D.C. in 2015.

Pascal Dusapin, Composer

Pascal Dusapin has firmly established himself as France’s most important and successful contemporary composer, notably in the theatre and opera house. Passion will be the first of Dusapin’s stage works performed in the UK. We are thrilled to be able to present the work of such a major and acclaimed European talent to UK audiences who have not yet been able to experience this work on home soil.

Find out more and listen to Dusapin’s existing work here:

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Amanda Holden, Libretto Translation

Amanda Holden grew up in a medical family in which music-making was part of everyday life. After a university degree in music she won a scholarship to the Guildhall School, London as an accompanist. She also studied Music Therapy and started the department at the Charing Cross Hospital - now relocated to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. She remained at the Guildhall, teaching the piano, and worked as a freelance accompanist until, by chance in 1985, she found herself - with her ex-husband Anthony - translating Don Giovanni for Jonathan Miller at English National Opera. She went on to write c.60 more translations and several librettos - these include Bliss for Brett Dean and The Silver Tassie for Mark Anthony Turnage, for which she became the first writer to receive the Olivier Award: Outstanding Achievement in Opera.

Regarded as the “wittiest and most adroit of contemporary practitioners of this difficult craft” (Daily Telegraph), Amanda's work is regularly performed throughout the English speaking world. Translations recently for ENO include Rodelinda (Handel) and Caligula (Glanert); her Castor & Pollux (Rameau) received an Olivier nomination. Amanda's translations of La bohème and Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti) will be at ENO in the coming 2018-19 season. Recent work includes English versions of Gluck’s Orpheus (Opera Theatre of St Louis, June 2018) and Hans Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queen (to be premiered in 2019). Amanda is also founder-editor of the Penguin Opera Guides; The Viking Opera Guide and The New Penguin Opera Guide contain 850 articles on opera composers and their works; the latest (5th) edition, The Opera Guide, 100 Popular Composers, is available online: www.amandaholden.org.uk

Gerald Barry, Composer

Gerald Barry was born in Clare in Ireland in 1952 and studied in Amsterdam and Cologne with Peter Schat, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel, among others. He came to prominence in 1979 with works including ‘________’ and Ø. He has since received commissions from the BBC Proms (Chevaux-de-frise), BBC Symphony Orchestra (The Conquest of Ireland, Day, Wiener Blut), Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (Dead March and Beethoven), London Sinfonietta (God Save the Queen and Feldman’s Sixpenny Editions), De Volharding Piano Quartet (Hard D), Ensemble 7Bridges (No People) and Bayerischer Rundfunk/Musica Viva and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (his Piano Concerto, written for Nicolas Hodges), among others.

His first opera The Intelligence Park was commissioned by the ICA and first performed in 1990 at the Aldeburgh Festival. It was followed by The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit (2002, Channel 4 Television and Aldeburgh Festival), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (2005, English National Opera), La Plus Forte (2007, Radio France), The Importance of Being Earnest, winner of the 2013 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Large-Scale Composition, and Alice’s Adventures Under Ground (2016, Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Gustavo Dudamel, the Barbican Centre and Britten Sinfonia).

Barry’s music has been recorded by ensembles including RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the Nash Ensemble, BCMG, the Almeida Ensemble, the Irish Chamber Orchestra and the Composers Ensemble, for NMC, Black Box Music, Metronome Records and Discovery Recordings.

Vincent Deane, Libretto

Vincent Deane has written and broadcast on Twentieth Century music. He has also co-edited a series of volumes of James Joyce’s pre-compositional material for Finnegans Wake, published as The Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo.

Jessica Cottis, Conductor

Jessica Cottis spent her early professional years as assistant conductor to Vladimir Ashkenazy at the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Since then her performances have received consistent acclaim in the national and international press.

Recently noted as the “Classical ‘face to watch’” (The Times), Cottis's dynamic conducting style, high musical intellect, and inspirational leadership have led to guest conducting invitations from orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, Houston Symphony, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, London Sinfonietta, Gävle Symphony Orchestra, Malmö Symphony Orchestra and Oulu Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous re-invitations to the prestigious BBC Proms.

Following the success of her debut at the Royal Opera House in 2017 conducting the premiere of Na’ama Zisser’s Mamzer, she was immediately re-invited to conduct the world premiere of The Monstrous Child by Gavin Higgins, which was “strikingly brought to life by the Aurora Orchestra conducted by Jessica Cottis” (Financial Times).

Upcoming performances this season include a return to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and debuts with Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony, and the English Chamber Orchestra. She works widely as an advocate for classical music.

Nigel Lowery, Director & Designer

Nigel Lowery trained in London at the Central St Martin’s School of Art and Design.

After graduating, early design work included Der Ring Des Nibelungen for Covent Garden, Blond Ekbert (ENO), Inquest Of Love (Brussels) and Giulio Cesare in Munich.

He first directed at the Batignano festival, quickly followed by Il barbiere di Siviglia for The Royal Opera and Hänsel und Gretel for Theater Basel. Further productions include Rinaldo Tito L’italiana in Algieri, Staatsoper in Berlin, Figaro in Stuttgart, Candide and Akhnaten in Antwerp.

He has worked closely on many operas with the choreographer Amir Hosseinpour – including Orphée et Eurydice in Munich and Platée in Amsterdam.

His productions have been seen at Festivals in Aldeburgh, Barcelona, Berlin and Edinburgh.

Tim Anderson, Music Director for UK

Tim Anderson is a British-German conductor based in London. After studying at New College, Oxford, Tim was invited by the late Gerard Mortier to work at the Teatro Real, Madrid in 2013. He now enjoys an active career working with many of Europe's great opera houses and orchestras. In 2019, Tim was Assistant Conductor for Music Theatre Wales and The Royal Opera's co-production of Gerald Barry's The Intelligence Park.

While working in Madrid, Tim conducted performances for the education department and assisted in preparing many productions for the main stage. After leaving Madrid, he was trainee répétiteur at English National Opera and has since worked regularly at Glyndebourne, Northern Ireland Opera, Nevill Holt Opera (where he is currently Associate Conductor), as well as at Oper Stuttgart, Garsington Opera, and with Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO.

Tim has wide experience in contemporary opera, including recently conducting the 30th anniversary production of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek at the Arcola Theatre, London, in a production by co-librettist and original director, Jonathan Moore. Tim also recently made his debuts with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and at Snape Maltings.

Further contemporary opera credits include musical preparation for Gavin Higgins's The Monstrous Child at the Royal Opera House with Jessica Cottis; assisting Nicholas Kok on the UK premiere of Silent Night at Opera North; musical preparation for the world premiere of Brett Dean's Hamlet at the Glyndebourne Festival with Vladimir Jurowski in 2017, and assisting Nicholas Carter on its revival at the 2018 Adelaide Festival with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra; musical preparation for John Adams's The Gospel According to the Other Mary at English National Opera; Thomas Adès's Powder Her Face at Northern Ireland Opera and Nevill Holt Opera; and Zesses Seglias's To the Lighthouse at the Bregenzer Festspiele.

Ksenia Ravvina, Co-Creator and Dramaturge

Theatre director, dramaturge and concept writer with interdisciplinary approach, embracing visual, music and performing arts.

Ksenia Ravvina (Saint Petersburg, Russia) received her diploma as a historian at the State University in Saint Petersburg. She studied theatre directing at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt. In 2010 she got the Best Director Award for the play White Nights at the 14th International Dostoyevsky Chamber Festival, Staraya Russa, Russia. In the winter semester 2014/2015 she started a Master's degree in Applied Theater Studies at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen, where she worked on scenic projects with Heiner Goebbels, Walid Raad, Bojana Kunst i.a. Ksenia Ravvina created performances on German and Russian stages, including projects for the Staatstheater Wiesbaden, the Theater und Orchester Heidelberg, Staatstheater Darmstadt and various works in cooperation with the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt, the Frankfurt LAB and the Schwankhalle in Bremen. She collaborated with different artists such as Artyom Ignatiev, Anastasia Kadruleva (The Theater Ballet Moscow), Katja Cheraneva, Alexandar Hadjiev, Theodore Huffman, Kristina Veit, Philip Venables, the MichaelDouglas Kollektiv and others.

Her work Adolescence was chosen for the residency program "Campustriennale Materclass" of the RUHRTRIENNALE 2016. In 2017, Ksenia Ravvina directed the KulturTagJahr 2016/17 - Altana Cultural Foundation at the Charles Hallgarten School in Frankfurt. She was a scholarship holder of the international research residency "next generation workspace", Theatre for Young Audiences in Frankfurt 2017/2018. With her latest work Makulatur she received a multi-city residency in the frames of Tanzplattform Rhein-Main 2017/2018. In spring 2018 she worked as a dramaturge and artistic consultant in performances for Dirty Deal Theatre Riga and ZUKT_#TANZ Mousonturm Frankfurt.

Ksenia Ravvina, Co-Creator and Dramaturge

Theatre director, dramaturge and concept writer with interdisciplinary approach, embracing visual, music and performing arts.

Ksenia Ravvina (Saint Petersburg, Russia) received her diploma as a historian at the State University in Saint Petersburg. She studied theatre directing at the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt. In 2010 she got the Best Director Award for the play White Nights at the 14th International Dostoyevsky Chamber Festival, Staraya Russa, Russia. In the winter semester 2014/2015 she started a Master's degree in Applied Theater Studies at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen, where she worked on scenic projects with Heiner Goebbels, Walid Raad, Bojana Kunst i.a. Ksenia Ravvina created performances on German and Russian stages, including projects for the Staatstheater Wiesbaden, the Theater und Orchester Heidelberg, Staatstheater Darmstadt and various works in cooperation with the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt, the Frankfurt LAB and the Schwankhalle in Bremen. She collaborated with different artists such as Artyom Ignatiev, Anastasia Kadruleva (The Theater Ballet Moscow), Katja Cheraneva, Alexandar Hadjiev, Theodore Huffman, Kristina Veit, Philip Venables, the MichaelDouglas Kollektiv and others.

Her work Adolescence was chosen for the residency program "Campustriennale Materclass" of the RUHRTRIENNALE 2016. In 2017, Ksenia Ravvina directed the KulturTagJahr 2016/17 - Altana Cultural Foundation at the Charles Hallgarten School in Frankfurt. She was a scholarship holder of the international research residency "next generation workspace", Theatre for Young Audiences in Frankfurt 2017/2018. With her latest work Makulatur she received a multi-city residency in the frames of Tanzplattform Rhein-Main 2017/2018. In spring 2018 she worked as a dramaturge and artistic consultant in performances for Dirty Deal Theatre Riga and ZUKT_#TANZ Mousonturm Frankfurt.

Philip Venables, Composer

Philip Venables has been described as a “composer of ferocious dramatic instincts” and “an arrestingly original musical personality” by Alex Ross in The New Yorker and as “one of the finest composers around” by the Guardian. His output covers opera, music theatre, multimedia concert works, chamber music and song, an eclectic range of styles and influences, and themes often concerning social politics, violence, gender and storytelling.

Philip's most recent opera Denis & Katya (Opera Philadelphia, Music Theatre Wales, Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier), with director/dramatist Ted Huffman, won the 2019 Fedora Generali Prize for Opera. Critics have called it “an intimate, haunting triumph” (New York Times), “a monumental, dramatically shattering event” (Parterre Box), and “the most brilliantly original operatic work I’ve seen in a decade…a sensitive, subtle and deeply questioning meditation on youth, voyeurism, and the age of social media” (Musical America).

Philip's first opera, 4.48 Psychosis (Royal Opera, London), was the first ever permitted adaptation of any of british playwright Sarah Kane's work. The opera won the 2016 UK Theatre Award for Opera, the 2017 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Large-scale Composition and the 2017 British Composer Award for Stage Work, and was nominated for an Olivier Award and Sky Arts South Bank Award. The original production (dir. Ted Huffman) and subsequent ones in London (Royal Opera), New York City (Prototype Festival), Strasbourg (Opéra National du Rhin) and Dresden (Semperoper) received overwhelming praise: “A new brand of opera” (The Times) “rawly powerful and laceratingly honest” (The Telegraph); “A Gesamtkunstwerk of unbelievable intensity” (Klassikfavori); “he ambushes and refreshes an old art form.” (The Observer); “4.48 Psychosis is a remarkable achievement” (The Guardian); “sledgehammer power” (The New Yorker); “opening our eyes to what musical theatre is capable of” (The Times %p Literary Supplement); “one of the most exhilarating operas in years” (The Spectator).

Philip collaborates extensively in cross-media work, including with artist Douglas Gordon on Bound to Hurt (HAU Theater Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Theater Basel), with drag/performance artist David Hoyle on Illusions (London Sinfonietta, UK New Music Biennial), The Gender Agenda (London Sinfonietta, Remix Ensemble, Asko Schoenberg and Ensemble Modern) and sound installation Canal Street (Manchester International Festival/Manchester Camerata) and with violinist Pekka Kuusisto on Venables plays Bartók (BBC Proms/BBC Symphony Orchestra). His debut album Below the Belt was released on NMC in 2018: “unmissable... music of forensic clarity and visceral force – but also great tenderness and generosity” (BBC Music Magazine).

Philip was a MacDowell Fellow with director Ted Huffman in 2017 and in the Opera Creation Workshop at Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2019. He studied at Cambridge University and then with Philip Cashian and David Sawer at the Royal Academy of Music, which elected him Associate (ARAM) in 2016 for his significant contribution to composition. Philip completed his doctorate in 2016 while Doctoral Composer in Residence at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Royal Opera House with the Royal Opera House with Julian Philips and James Weeks. He is a director of the agency Bright Ivy Ltd. His work is published exclusively by Ricordi.

www.philipvenables.com

Ted Huffman, Writer & Director

Based in London, Ted Huffman is a writer and director best known for his work in contemporary opera.

His most recent opera with composer Philip Venables, Denis & Katya, commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, won the 2019 Fedora Generali Prize. Critics have called it "an intimate, haunting triumph" (New York Times), "a monumental, dramatically shattering event" (Parterre Box), and "the most brilliantly original operatic work I've seen in a decade…a sensitive, subtle and deeply questioning meditation on youth, voyeurism, and the age of social media" (Musical America).

Together with Venables, he has also written Alice for tenor and piano, based on tenor Daniel Shelvey's memories of his grandmother, and The Big History of Little England, a children's opera that tells the history of England from the Big Bang through Brexit in twelve minutes. They are currently at work on another full-length commission.

During the 2019/20 season, Ted will make directing debuts at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, Opéra national du Rhin, and Opera Philadelphia as well as returning to Opernhaus Zürich, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, and Opéra national de Montpellier for new productions.

His production of 4.48 Psychosis (Venables/Kane) for the Royal Opera House won the UK Theatre Award for Best Opera Production as well as best production nominations for an Olivier Award, an RPS Award, and a South Bank Sky Arts Award. This production travelled to the Prototype Festival (NYC) and to the Opéra national du Rhin. His production of Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno for the Royal Theater Copenhagen and Malmö Opera received a Reumert Prize nomination and a Copenhagen Culture Award nomination for Best Opera and will play next year at the Opéra national de Montpellier. Other awards include the WhatsOnStage Award and an RPS Award nomination for The Lighthouse (Maxwell-Davies) in the Linbury Theatre and a Best Director nomination in the Opernwelt Jahrbuch for El Cimarrón (Henze).

Ted's past work includes Madama Butterfly (Opernhaus Zürich), Rinaldo (Oper Frankfurt), Salome (Oper Köln), Arthur Lavandier's Le premier meurtre (Opéra de Lille), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Opéra national de Montpellier), Luke Styles' Macbeth (Glyndebourne), Ana Sokolovic's Svádba (Festival Aix-en-Provence, Opéra Angers-Nantes, Les Théâtres de la ville de Luxembourg, Festival Ljubljana), Poulenc's Les mamelles de Tirésias (La Monnaie, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Dutch National Opera, Juilliard Opera, Aldeburgh Festival), and Ullmann's Der Kaiser von Atlantis (Central City Opera, Juilliard Opera, Greenwich Music Festival).

A native New Yorker, Ted studied Humanities at Yale University and apprenticed at San Francisco's Merola Opera Program. He was a MacDowell Fellow in 2017.

Sound Intermedia, Sound design realised for UK

Launched in 1996 by Ian Dearden and David Sheppard, Sound Intermedia revels in the challenge of bringing new work to its audience. Renowned for sophisticated sound designs for live events, they have worked in concert halls and opera houses around the world, collaborating with many of the preeminent creators and performers of new music of the last 70 years.

Their experience is sought when exceptional events go beyond established paradigms. They have devised and curated installations and performances in museums, art galleries and a myriad of unusual spaces around the world - from Venice Beach California to Aldeburgh beach in Suffolk; from the tunnels of London Underground to helicopters over Paris.

Their aim is to motivate and influence musicians, technicians and composers through authoritative performance and to pass on their ingenuity to the next generation, better to serve the music of the future.

Alice Birch, Writer

Alice Birch is the winner of the Arts Foundation Award for Playwriting 2014, the co-winner of the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright 2014 and was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award in 2012 and 2015.

Her film work includes Lady Macbeth, which was nominated for Outstanding Debut & Best British Feature BAFTA 2018. Her second feature film will be an adaptation of the Graham Swift novel Mothering Sunday for Number 9 Films and Film 4. She will also adapt bestselling novel The Silent Patient for Plan B.

Alice has also written for TV, working on Normal People (BBC / Element Pictures) adapted from the novel by Sally Rooney. Alice was also in the writers’ room as Story Editor for Season 2 of Succession (HBO).

In theatre, Alice has written [BLANK] (Donmar Warehouse / Clean Break); Orlando (Schaubühne, Berlin); La Maladie de la Mort (Bouffes du Nord); Anatomy of a Suicide, Ophelia’s Zimmer, Revolt. She said. Revolt again (Royal Court Theatre); We Want You To Watch (National Theatre); The Lone Pine Club (Pentabus); Little Light (Orange Tree); Little on the inside (Almeida/Clean Break); Salt (Comedie de Valence); and Many Moons (Theatre503).

In 2016, Alice was selected as one of the Creative England 50, a shortlist of individuals and companies judged to be the country’s most inventive, innovative and creative minds. In 2015 Alice was nominated for Friedrich Luft Prize.

Jude Christian, Director

Jude is an Associate Artist at the Gate Theatre and Associate Director at HOME. As a writer her work includes Nanjing (Shakespeare’s Globe, Royal Court, Theatertreffen Stückemart), Cinderella, Dick Whittington (Lyric Hammersmith). Her directing credits include Dark Night of the Soul (Shakespeare’s Globe), Peter Pan (Brageteatret, Norway), Trust, I’d Rather Goya Robbed Me of My Sleep Than Some Other Arsehole (Gate Theatre, London), Blue (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama), Lela & Co, My Mum’s a Twat, Bodies (Royal Court Theatre), Parliament Square (Royal Exchange, Manchester, and Bush Theatre), Jack and the Beanstalk, Dick Whittington, othellomacbeth (Lyric Hammersmith) and How Do You Eat an Elephant/Bwyta Eliffant, Sut Mae Gwneud Hynny Dwedwch? (National Youth Theatre of Wales).

Jude’s associate director credits include The Seagull, Shopping and Fucking, Aladdin (Lyric Hammersmith), Three Sisters, The Darkest Corridors (RashDash) and Carmen Disruption (Almeida).

Tom Coult, Composer

Tom Coult is a composer born in London in 1988. His playful and seductive music has been championed by many of the UK’s major orchestras and ensembles, resulting in a series of acclaimed large-scale pieces including Beautiful Caged Thing for soprano Claire Booth and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Sonnet Machine for the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and St John’s Dance (premiered by Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra to open the First Night of the 2017 BBC Proms).

He has enjoyed particular associations with ensembles such as Britten Sinfonia and London Sinfonietta (who premiered Spirit of the Staircase, nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts Award), and in 2020 will again work with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra with the premiere of Pleasure Garden, a concerto for violinist Daniel Pioro.

His music has been described as ‘funny and surreal and delicately poetic, all at once’ (The Telegraph), and ‘full of bewitching sounds…fresh and precisely imagined’ (The Guardian) – ‘Coult is a composer who spins glittering, teasingly ambiguous patterns out of simple-seeming material…a very individual voice’ (The Telegraph).

Rosie Elnile, Designer

Theatre Includes; Run Sister Run; Sheffield Crucible, [Blank] Donmar Warehouse, Our Town (Regents Park Open Air Theatre), The Ridiculous Darkness, Unknown Island, The Convert (Gate); The American Clock (Old Vic); The Wolves (Theatre Royal Stratford East); The Mysteries, Three Sisters (Royal Exchange, Manchester); Abandon (Lyric Hammersmith); Returning to Haifa (Finborough Theatre); Goats (Royal Court); Prime Time (Royal Court Schools Tour); BIG GUNS (Yard)

Joshua Pharo, Lighting Designer

Augmented (Told By An Idiot UK Tour); The Bee in Me (Unicorn); Cinderella (Lyric Hammersmith); Vassa (Almeida); The Color Purple (Leicester Curve & Birmingham Hippodrome); Noughts & Crosses (UK Tour); Counting Sheep (Belarus Free Theatre); Going Through (Bush Theatre); othellomacbeth (Lyric Hammersmith/ Home Manchester); The Ridiculous Darkness, Trust, Medea, I’d Rather Goya Robbed Me of My Sleep, No Place Like Home (Gate Theatre); The Wolves (Stratford East); Future Bodies (Home Manchester); 100: UnEarth (Wild Works); Nanjing (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse); Double Vision (Wales Millennium Centre); random/generations (Chichester Festival Theatre); The Shape of Pain (China Plate, Fringe First Winner/ Battersea Arts Centre); Hearty, Removal Men (Yard Theatre); The Claim (UK Tour); La Tragédie De Carmen (Royal Opera House/ Wilton’s Music Hall); Frau Welt (Hackney Showroom); Cosmic Scallies (Royal Exchange/ Graeae); How I Hacked My Way Into Space (Unlimited Theatre/ Tour); Bullish (Camden People’s Theatre); Burning Doors (Belarus Free Theatre); Bodies (Royal Court); Nest (Brighton/ Take Off Festivals); How My Light Is Spent (Royal Exchange)

Andrew Gourlay, Conductor

Born in Jamaica, with Russian ancestry, Andrew Gourlay grew up in the Bahamas, Philippines, Japan and England. A trombonist and pianist by training, he studied conducting at the Royal College of Music, where he prepared Bruckner symphonies for Bernard Haitink and Mozart symphonies for Sir Roger Norrington. He was selected by Gramophone magazine as their ‘One to Watch’, and by BBC Music Magazine as their ‘Rising Star: great artists of tomorrow’.

Andrew Gourlay won First Prize at the 2010 Cadaques International Conducting Competition, securing concerts with 29 orchestras around the world. For the next two years he was Assistant Conductor to Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra. In 2015 Gourlay took up the position of Music Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León (OSCYL), having been their Principal Guest Conductor since the 2014/15 season, and celebrated the orchestra’s 25th anniversary in 2016/17.