Following Garsington Opera for All’s successful first year of public screenings in isolated coastal and rural communities, Tchaikovsky’s powerful opera Eugene Onegin will be screened in four areas across the UK.
Free events are programmed for Skegness (2 July), Ramsgate (25 – 30 July), Bridgewater (20 August) and Grimsby (30 September). Garsington Opera’s 2015 production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte will be also be screened this year at the Buckingham Fringe Festival (11 June) and Marlow Town Festival (12 June). In each location a large-scale programme of education and outreach work is firmly integrated with the digital free public screenings and will provide ground breaking opportunities for communities to be involved in creating, learning about, and performing opera .
Opera for All is a programme which challenges expectation by uncovering the ingredients and foundation of opera – drama, music, story-telling and expressive emotion. In 2015 Opera for All’s touring participation programme involved over 1000 young people taking part in creative residencies at both primary and secondary schools. For the students in each of the 25 schools, the experience of working alongside a team of professional artists to create and perform their own pieces in relation to the opera that was screened, was transformative. For many it was their first experience of live professional singing and it set confidence and aspiration soaring.
Grant Edgar, Associate Head, Skegness Grammar commented: ‘The confidence that the young people can develop by performing challenging tasks, really takes them out of their comfort zone. To see them ‘buzzing’ from the experience is really very pleasing indeed’
Opera for All is a three-year partnership project between Garsington Opera, the charitable trust Magna Vitae, and the Coastal Communities Alliance, and is supported by Arts Council England’s Strategic Touring Fund.
Tchaikovsky’s powerful and moving opera Eugene Onegin (director Michael Boyd, designer Tom Piper, conductor Douglas Boyd) about youth and first love, features British baritone Roderick Williams in the title role and Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw singing the young heroine Tatyana. Mozart’s Così fan tutte featuring international star Lesley Garrett, is a bittersweet comedy in which real people face real and painful predicaments.
SCREENING DATES FOR EUGENE ONEGIN
SKEGNESS Saturday 2 July 12.30pm Tower Esplanade SO Festival
RAMSGATE 25 – 30 July Ramsgate Beach, Ramsgate Arts Festival
BRIDGEWATER & BURNHAM Saturday 20 August APEX Park, Burnham-on-Sea
GRIMSBY Friday 30 September 7pm Grimsby Central Hall