- Composer - Ed Hughes
- Librettist - Roger Morris
- Video - Will Reynolds & Poppy Burton-Morgan
- Featuring the voices of Andrew McIntosh (baritone); Lucy Williams (mezzo); Peter Kirk (tenor); Emily Phillips (soprano); Ben Williamson (counter-tenor); also video artist Loren O'Dair.
- Ensemble - The New Music Players
- Advisers: Tim Hopkins and David Chandler (Professor of Photography, University of Plymouth).
- Duration: 70 minutes
The Poet faces a choice: his writing or getting his dead lover back. He dreams of the Underworld where he meets the characters of his past and his imagination. He must choose between love and creativity.
This new opera is being worked on during Autumn 2011 and Spring 2012 towards a full scoring for a cast of five singers and ensemble (The New Music Players) with live electronics. A public presentation is planned for 2013. The project will explore the use of specially created video, and archive stills and footage in the wake of World War II, in order to add new textures to the concert performance of opera, and to find fresh ways of contextualising works with historical and mythical resonances in performance.
Ed Hughes has been previously commissioned by The Opera Group and City of London Festival (The Birds); Brighton Festival (Memory of Colour); and other groups/ensembles. His works have been extensively toured by the New Music Players which he directs, as well as released on CD and DVD (Tartan, BFI). He is a Senior Lecturer in Music at Sussex University.
Roger Morris’s novels have been published by Macmillan and Faber and widely translated. His book A Vengeful Longing (Faber, 2008) was shortlisted for the CWA Duncan Lawrie Award.
Will Reynolds Recent set & lighting designs include Waiting (Southbank Centre), Otieno and Blood Wedding (Southwark Playhouse), Saturday Night (Arts Theatre), Moonfleece (National Tour) and La Boheme (Palestinian Tour). Projection designs include Prima Donna (Sadlers Wells), The Gambler (Royal Opera House), Das Rheingold (National Reisopera, Holland) and Home (Theatre Royal Bath).
The New Music Players have recorded for BBC Radio 3, and performed in festivals and venues across the UK and abroad. Their commissions have included James Wood, Rolf Hind, Michael Finnissy and many others. Recent releases include a special 5.1 realisation of Ed Hughes's score to Eisenstein's classic film Battleship Potemkin (for Tartan Video).
Ed Hughes | Selected Press
‘A fine example of the hidden gems the Brighton Festival can produce’
Evening Argus 12 May 2004 on Memory of Colour
‘Pure magic...A rip-roaring vital spectacle...a show of terrific vitality and verve’
Independent 1 July 2005 on The Birds
‘truly emotional...an atmosphere of deeper resonances’ Times 1 July 2005 on The Birds