After its successful launch last year, GRIMEBORN – An Opera Season is back at Arcola for three weeks of theatrical innovation from the frontline of contemporary music and performance.

Grimeborn was conceived to give young companies and old masters the opportunity to show their work in a venue that appreciates the diversity of theatrical forms and highlight the performance as much as the music.

Monday 4 August

THE OLD MAID AND THE THIEF
‘The devil couldn’t do what a woman can – make a thief out of an honest man!’ A rarely performed one-act opera, full of mischief and mistaken identity. Will Bob the Wanderer bring love to a Spinster’s lonely life? Or be discovered as a criminal on the run? A tale of loose morals and women’s powers of manipulation.
Composer/Librettist: Gian Carlo Menotti
Director: Nina Brazier
Conductor: Timothy Burke

 

 

Tuesday 5 August *Triple Bill – 3 shows for £10*

A MAN OF FEELING
A soprano’s determination to achieve success on the operatic stage leads to tragic consequences, in this elegant and witty short work by the late Stephen Oliver based on the story Der Empfindsame, by Arthur Schnitzler.
Composer/Librettist: Stephen Oliver
Director: Anthony Baker
Music Director: Tim Henty
Soprano: Lisa Wilson
Baritone: John Savournin
Pianist: James Young

DREAMSPIEL by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain
These factual ‘Diaries of the Night’ from 1930s Germany render ‘dreams of political realities under totalitarianism, innerworlds of fear, confusion and craziness’.  Current concerns with ‘protection, menace and increased surveillance’ re-energise these ‘painful, farcical, and satirical dreams’, reminiscent of Beckett, Orwell, and Gunter Grass, prior to Endgame, 1984, or The Tin Drum.
Composer: George Hincliffe
Librettist: Michelle Carter

KINDERTOTENLIEDER
Well known artistes on the East End alternative circuit, Lisa Lee, Dicky Beau and his alter ego ‘Alma Mater’ join Mezzo Soprano Siobhan Mooney and Baritone Devon Harrison in creating a stage performance and live lipsynch in this daring new interpretation of Mahler’s melancholic song cycle using Friedrich Rückert’s haunting poems, ‘Songs on the Deaths of Children’.
Composer: Gustav Mahler
Director: Janwillen van den Bosch
Pianist: Linda Ang

Wednesday 6 August *Triple Bill – 3 shows for £10*

THE ELEPHANT’S CHILD by Metta Theatre
‘Scuse me, but what does the Crocodile have for dinner?’ A new puppet opera based on Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale. Join us on a joyous storytelling journey, to discover how the Elephant got its trunk with the aid of the hungry Crocodile. Suitable for children.
Composer: Jessica Dannheisser
Director: Poppy Burton-Morgan

THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE
A new musical adaptation of the short story by Oscar Wilde. It is a story of love and sacrifice, with soaring, evocative melodies to accompany a heart-wrenching tale. Suitable for children.
Composer/Librettist: Jenny Gould
Director: Tom Mansfield

DESIRE CAUGHT BY THE TAIL
A new setting of excerpts from Picasso’s wild 1942 play, where the hunger and deprivation of occupied Paris is reflected through a surrealist prism to create a world of decadence and abundance, featuring such luminaries as Big Foot, The Onion and The Tart. Suitable for children.
Composer: Joseph Finlay
Director: Max Webster
Associate Director: Rachel Grunwald

Friday 8 August
Saturday 9 August

GOODBYE BARCELONA
Inspired by interviews we carried out with British ‘Brigadistas’ who fought against Fascism in the Spanish Civil War, this is a passionate new musical about a mother and son caught up in the fighting. As the surviving International Brigaders reach the end of their lives, it is out heartfelt wish to bring their stories of political will, commitment, fear, shame, bravery and heartbreak to a new generation and to generations to come.
Book: Judith Johnson
Music and Lyrics: Karl Lewkowicz
Director: Mehmet Ergen

 

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