Organization

Conductor

Peter Robinson

Stage director

Stuart Barker

Set designer

Raphae Memon

Costume designer

Elaine Needham

Lighting designer

Paul Botham

Singer

Soprano

Olivia Rose Tringham

The prima donna

Royal Northern College of Music

Ariadne auf Naxos -  (Ariadne on Naxos)

Manchester

United Kingdom

RNCM

Ariadne auf Naxos Strauss,R (+1 More)

Public

Ariadne on Naxos

The Medium

English

Approved

After two years in the dark, the lights on the RNCM Opera stage have been switched back on.  To mark the occasion, we are performing two fully staged operas in an exciting double bill programme.

Students from across the College are joined by one of the UK’s most experienced and versatile conductors, Peter Robinson, and British Youth Opera’s Director of Training and Programmes, Stuart Barker. Together they are bringing to life two of opera’s most intriguing and innovative works.

Set backstage in a theatre, the Prologue from Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos unveils the struggle between two theatrical groups who, due to time constraints, have been ordered to perform their different shows simultaneously.  It is comedy versus tragedy against Strauss’s ingenious musical backdrop of opera buffa and opera seria resulting in flirtatious encounters, hot-headed arguments, and general chaos from all involved.

Written in 1946, the rarely performed American opera, Menotti’s The Medium, tells the story of a fraudulent psychic who finds herself embroiled in the spiritual world when, during one of her fake seances, encounters a genuine ghostly presence.  Her inability to understand or explain this unnerving situation drives her to madness and, eventually, murder.  This chamber opera is full of vocal lyricism and rich orchestral harmonies which underpins this unusual operatic melodrama.

It is a double bill like no other and we are thrilled to raise the curtain once again and welcome back audiences to the RNCM Opera.

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Crew