Composer Peter Maxwell Davies
Conductor Richard Baker
Director Ted Huffman

Featuring Aurora Orchestra

English Touring Opera’s season of three operas with the award-winning Aurora Orchestra is surprising, risky, exciting and entertaining.

Peter Maxwell Davies’ most frequently performed opera, The Lighthouse, is based on a real-life account of the mysterious disappearance of three lighthouse keepers on the Flannan Islands, Scotland.

A very intense, suspenseful night of music theatre describes the cramped and foggy conditions at the lighthouse, and the claustrophobia of the court hearing at which the relief keepers give their account of the incident. Each of the keepers is depicted with penetrating insight, so that beneath their calm, blameless exteriors the audience senses a troubled past.

Davies’ theatrical score ratchets up the tension with consummate skill; moments of lyric beauty, banjo-accompanied ballads, and hymn-inspired movements lead to a powerful, percussive conclusion. This is modern English music at its most theatrically effective.

Composer Benjamin Britten
Conductor Michael Rosewell
Director Christopher Rolls

Featuring Aurora Orchestra

English Touring Opera’s season of three operas with the award-winning Aurora Orchestra is surprising, risky, exciting and entertaining.

Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring has become a classic, comic depiction of English village life. It describes the election by village committee of a shy local lad in a grocer’s shop as May King – a title normally awarded as May Queen to a virtuous girl, but no one matches up to the exacting standards of virtue held by Lady Billows. Naturally, the crowning of the May King does not go quite as planned, and poor (or lucky) Albert Herring ends up straying rather far from the path of virtue.

A genuinely hilarious satire with undertones of melancholy, Albert Herring is a village masterpiece, with a score of great beauty. ETO’s new production is conducted by Michael Rosewell, a Britten expert, and directed by Christopher Rolls. The cast includes a splendid group of experienced singers and actors as Lady Billows (Jennifer Rhys-Davies) and her committee, with Mark Wilde in the title role as the youth they judge so severely.

Composer Viktor Ullmann
Conductor Peter Selwyn
Director James Conway

Featuring Aurora Orchestra

English Touring Opera’s season of three operas with the award-winning Aurora Orchestra is surprising, risky, exciting and entertaining.

Viktor Ullmann’s short opera The Emperor of Atlantis was written when the composer and writer were prisoners at the Terezín concentration camp, and it was first rehearsed by inmates of the camp, all of whom perished when transferred to Auschwitz before the premiere. The score was smuggled out of the camp, and it has been acclaimed in performances around the world as an extraordinary testament of wit and humanity in the face of barbarity.

It is not set in the camp – ironically, this black comedy reflects Ullmann’s experiences as an Austrian soldier in the WWI Italian campaign. Ullmann’s score, jazzy and expressive, is full of humour and pathos, and the opera is deeply moving. James Conway’s new production is paired with a poignant staging of Bach’s sublime cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden (Christ Lay in Death’s Bonds), arranged by Iain Farrington for Ullmann’s unusual orchestra.

Extra events:
The evening will start at 7.30pm with a 10 minute cycle of songs in response to the opera written by Helen Chadwick. There will then be a free pre-show talk.

After a short interval, the main performance of Christ lag in Todesbanden/The Emperor of Atlantis will start at 8.15pm. Your ticket entitles you to attend these extra events, but you may attend only the main performance if you would prefer.