RCM Opera Triple Bill: Britten, Weill and Ravel

25 November 2024 - 30 November 2024

The 海角乱伦官方 Opera Studio presents an intoxicating trio of works celebrating the French language and showcasing the versatility of RCM singers.

Step back in time for an evening of spectacular escapism, as we wind back the clock and carry you through a musical triptych of works celebrating the French language.

Your evening starts in the 1940s with RCM alumnus Benjamin Britten’s Les Illuminations, a contemplative song cycle set to poetry by Arthur Rimbaud. Our protagonist, who embodies the spirit of performance, confronts her own fragility and loss of mental faculties due to aging. She desperately seeks to remember who she was in a pre-war world and her artistic heyday.

Next, we transport you to a chapter of our protagonist’s life: the colourful, cabaret-filled 1930s, for a song cycle conceived from Kurt Weill’s early work Marie Galante, featuring a selection of beguiling, rarely performed songs and musical scenes.

We finally land in the golden age of performance and a larger-than-life set in the 1920s, for a farcical plot that features a host of mischievous characters concealed in clocks, in Ravel’s popular comédie musicale L’heure espagnole.

This production is made possible with the assistance of the Basil Coleman bequest.