CoLab 2023, Final Night: The Hearn Recital Room

A Step in the Dark - Two New Ways to Look at Opera

FRI 24 FEB 2023, 17:30-18:40

The Hearn Recital Room series in CoLab 2023 present a double-bill. Two projects look at opera from different perspectives, offering new possible articulations to what is, and could opera be in our time.

Take Care - Revisiting and developing an Opera is initiated by our staff members, Keyboard and Composition professor Douglas Finch and opera director Gidon Saks. Take Care is an opera by Douglas Finch and librettist Cindy Oswin about caring for people with dementia. It was developed through field research and was premiered in Nottingham, April 2022. Joined by Conductor Vicente Chavarria, TL Junior Fellow, this CoLab project re-imagines two scenes from the original opera, collectively exploring new interpretations and possibilities through improvisation.

Want to make SolarPunk Clown Opera with me? was initiated by Master Vocal student Eleanor Westbrook. The group uses fragments of classical operatic repertoire, physical and musical improvisation, and the aid of clownish playfulness to devise a new operatic work.

A better world through the operatic imagination?

The Hearn Recital Room, Blackheath Halls
Free admission, tickets required