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Welcoming our Elixir of Love R&D team!!

We are so excited to be working with this brilliant group of people this autumn on the Research & Development period of our brand new adaptation of Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love. Director/librettist Joanna Turner has been hard at work cutting, pasting, rewriting the story and updating the libretto (words) of the opera for London life today while composer Leo Geyer has been busy rewriting the music from full orchestra to 3 instruments suitable for promenade performance – our classic combo of violin, accordion & bassoon! And designer Marina Hadjilouca and Joanna have started discussing what these characters and the world they live in will look like. Now the cast have the new score and we’re excited to be exploring it with them in rehearsal this autumn and sharing some of our work with some of our friends and community partners. We’re delighted to be working some new people as well as welcoming back some friendly faces!

Welcome to our brilliant team!

 

Abigail Kelly – Adina

Born and raised in Birmingham, Abigail studied at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire graduating with a first class honours degree and continued her studies at the Royal Scottish Conservatoire of Scotland.

Abigail’s operatic roles include Susanna and Barbarina (The Marriage of Figaro – Mozart) English Touring Opera (ETO), Pamina (The Magic Flute – Mozart) Opera Up Close, Ninetta (La Gazza Ladra – Rossini) Midland Opera, Fido (Paul Bunyan – Britten) ETO, Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro – Mozart) Opéra de Baugé, First Boy (The Magic Flute – Mozart) ETO, First Lady (The Magic Flute – Mozart) Opera Minima, Despina (Così fan tutte – Mozart) ETO, Naiad (Rusalka – Dvořák) ETO, Cobweb (A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Britten) ETO and Adele (Die Fledermaus – Strauss)Baseless Fabric Theatre.

Digital performances since 2020 have included an operatic recital aimed for younger audiences for the Royal Albert Hall as part of their Royal Albert Home series; Shh! we have a plan, an operatic version of the children’s book by Chris Haughton with music by composer Noah Moseley (ETO); For OperaUpClose Abigail performed the title role of Sammy in Sammy and the Beanstalk, written by Robin Norton-Hale and composed by Rosabella Gregory; UNSEEN a performance project commissioned by Streetwise Opera with music by John Barber in collaboration with Streetwise Opera performers from across the UK.

Abigail directed the children’s show How to Find Your Name for ETO which toured the UK in the Spring 2022 season tour. She has subsequently directed devised performances for Turtle Key Arts and the YAM Award winning children’s opera The Wish Gatherer for ETO. This year Abigail directed part of a song cycle by Cassie Kinoshi and lydia luke for Birmingham Opera Company as part of their ‘Brum Commissions’ project and was festival Director for Streetwise Opera’s Re:Discover season.

 

Jonathan Cooke – Nemorino

Born and raised in Cheshire, versatile tenor Jonathan Cooke enjoys a varied singing career both in England and abroad. He studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and has worked with some of the country’s biggest opera companies including Garsington, Scottish Opera, Grange Park Opera, Longborough Festival Opera and West Green House Opera.

Jonathan’s operatic rôles include divers characters such as Ruggero La Rondine (RCS), Le Mari Les Mamelles de Tiresias (RCS), Eisenstein die Fledermaus (Fulham Opera, Baseless Fabric), Squeak Billy Budd (St Endellion Summer Music Festival), Turridu, Cavalleria Rusticana (Hampstead Garden Opera, North Wales Opera Studio) Cavaradossi Tosca (Bridgetower Ensemble Opera, North Wales Opera Studio) and Lensky Eugene Onegin (Opera South East).

Outside of opera, and amongst other things, Jonathan is privileged to sing for Songhaven, a dementia-friendly concert series.

Pre-lockdown in 2020, Jonathan sang the rôle of Pinkerton in Opera Up Close’s tour of Madam Butterfly. During the pandemic, with performing opportunities sparse, he still managed to perform in socially-distanced performances of Tristan und Isolde, Tosca, and Carmen. Most recently, Jonathan returned to Kentish Opera to sing the title rôle in The Tales of Hoffmann.

 

Jack Holton – Belcore

Actor and baritone actor Jack Holton trained at GSMD and National Opera Studio, and is a Young Artist with Opera Prelude and the Musicians Company.

Jack is currently playing Julian (alternate) The Fabulist at Charing Cross Theatre.

Recent roles include Fiorello The Barber of Seville and Captor Tosca at Opera Holland Park, Henri The Runaway Royal and Guglielmo (cover) Così fan tutte at Opera North, Guglielmo Così fan tutte for Baseless Fabric, and Count Ribbing Un Ballo in Maschera for Chelsea Opera Group. Other roles include Renato Un Ballo in Maschera, Eugene Onegin, Silvio I Pagliacci, Don Giovanni and Sky Masterson Guys & Dolls.

In Spring 2025 will cover the roles of Ned Keane Peter Grimes and Count Almaviva Le nozze di Figaro at Opera North.

Jack is represented by Musichall Ltd

 

Alistair Sutherland – Dulcamara

A graduate from The Royal Academy of Music, Alistair was selected as a 2012 young artist with Opera Holland Park. He continues to work with OHP as a chorister and comprimario performing roles such as Second Yeoman (The Yeoman of the Guard) or Pinellino (Gianni Schicchi).

He has worked with a number of smaller touring companies, creating roles for OperaUpClose such as Schaunard (La bohème), Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) and Dulcamara (L’elisir d’amore). Other roles include Nick Shadow (The Rake’s Progress), Smirnov (The Bear), Michele (Il Tabarro), Des Grieux (The Portrait of Manon), Sam (Trouble in Tahiti) and Bluebeard (Bluebeard’s Castle).

Alistair works regularly with organisations such as OHP Inspire, The Music Mind Spirit Trust, and Songbird incorporating music into therapeutic settings for a variety of needs. He leads regular sessions at King’s College Hospital, as well as performing for a number of care-home groups leading dementia aware song-groups, and he runs folk- music ensemble in South London.

www.alistairsutherland.com

 

Louisa Till – Violin

Louisa is an active violinist and teacher based in London. She studied at the Royal Northern College of Music with Cecily Ward, James Clark and Pavel Fischer, gaining both BMus and MMus degrees. 

At the RNCM, Louisa participated in projects with the BBC Philharmonic, Manchester Camerata and Chamber Orchestra of Europe, as well as touring internationally to Paris and Montepulciano in Italy. 

Since moving to London, Louisa has enjoyed performing with the London Mozart Players and with Baseless Fabric Theatre, for a re-imagined production of Bizet’s Carmen. She also has a keen interest in musical theatre and has performed at the London Palladium for concert performances of Camelot and Dr Zhivago. 

Louisa is passionate about her work as an educator and for the past two years has worked for Music Masters, a charity which provides access to music education for primary school children in London.

 

Ilona Suomalainen – Accordion

Originally from Helsinki, Finland, Ilona Suomalainen graduated with a Masters degree from the Royal Academy of Music in 2017, studying under professor Owen Murray. Since then, she has gone on to establish a varied and diverse career as a freelance accordionist in the UK, with recent projects including work with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Aurora Orchestra, Opera Holland Park and Birmingham Opera Company. Outside of classical music, she regularly performs with the Israeli pop-jazz singer Irit Dekel, most recently supporting Caro Emerald and Lisa Stansfield on their respective UK nationwide tours.

Before moving to London, Ilona graduated from the Sibelius-Academy in Helsinki with a MMus degree studying with professors Matti Rantanen, Veli Kujala and Mika Väyrynen. In 2006, she won first-prize in the Finnish National Youth Accordion Competition and with her accordion trio, BCH, won the Chamber Music, Accordion Orchestra and Overall categories at the 2011 International Accordion Competition in Pula, Croatia. The trio also received the prize for the highest points ever awarded in the competition’s history.

A passionate teacher and educator, Ilona currently teaches accordion at the International School of London and privately across London. As part of her studies at the Sibelius-Academy, she also undertook an intensive course in specialised pedagogical training, which qualifies her to teach in educational institutions from pre-school to university.

 

Leo Geyer – Arranger/MD/Bassoon

Born in London of Anglo-Indian descent, Leo Geyer is a young composer, conductor, and presenter. He enjoys a busy and diverse career composing and conducting opera, dance, film, and concert music. He has established a reputation for his reimaginings, which creatively engage with music of the past, and is currently studying for a doctorate in opera-ballet composition as the Senior Music Scholar at St Catherine’s College, Oxford.

Leo’s music has been described by The Times as “imaginative and beautifully shaped”, and has received performances by ensembles including the English Chamber Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Rambert Dance Company and Opera North.

Leo began his conducting career at the Royal Opera House as a Cover Conductor for The Royal Ballet. Described by James Murphy, CEO of the Royal Philharmonic Society as “one of the great young British conductors to watch,” Leo has worked as a guest conductor with the BBC Concert Orchestra, English National Opera, Birmingham Contemporary Music Ensemble, the National Theatre, Ensemble 212 (USA), AUT (Denmark), and other ensembles.

​When he was 19, Leo founded an orchestra which has now grown to become Constella Music. He has brought together internationally renowned artists in numerous critically acclaimed performances across the UK. Last year, Leo began his training as a presenter on the BBC Open Music Programme with Katie Derham as his mentor. He made his debut at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Concert Orchestra, for a BBC Proms performance broadcast live on Radio 3.

 

Joanna Turner – Director/Librettist

Joanna is Artistic Director of Baseless Fabric. She is an opera director and theatre maker with a particular passion for re-imagining classics, working in non-traditional theatre spaces and reaching new diverse audiences. Experienced working on big stages as well as in site-specific, immersive and promenade environments, Joanna places clear detailed storytelling and a focus on the relationships between characters at the heart of her work.

Recent credits include: Cosi Fan Tutte (Royal Danish Opera – Revival Director), Carmen (Arcola Theatre & Street Opera, 4 Stars Evening Standard), Die Fledermaus (Arcola Theatre & Street Opera – 4 Stars The Guardian & The Stage), Cosi Fan Tutte (Street Opera – OffWestEnd Award Finalist for Best Opera Production).

As a librettist Joanna has adapted and re-written new contemporary English librettos of The Elixir of Love, Carmen, Die Fledermaus and Cosi Fan Tutte for re-imagined productions aimed at reaching new diverse audiences performed promenade in public spaces.

Associate/Revival Director credits include work at Vlaamse Opera Belgium, New York City Opera and Opera North and as Assistant Director at Opera North, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera, Toronto Luminato Festival, Shakespeare’s Globe and Young Vic. Directors assisted include Katie Mitchell, Tim Albery and Daniel Kramer. Joanna also worked as a script reader for Liverpool Everyman and Manchester Royal Exchange including for the Bruntwood Prize, and as a youth theatre leader at the Orange Tree Theatre and Hackney Music Development Trust.

 

Marina Hadjilouca – Designer

Marina Hadjilouca - DesignerMarina Hadjilouca is an award winning Performance Designer and an Academic currently based at Rose Bruford College. As a practitioner, Marina creates Scenographic Interventions in contested public spaces and designs sets and costumes for theatrical performances and the opera. She has collaborated with major theatre organisations in the UK, Cyprus and Greece, including Arcola’s Grimeborn Festival, the National Theatre of Cyprus, and the International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama.

As a researcher Marina focuses on the use of performance design as a methodology for politicised practices. Marina’s research interests lie in the synergies between social art practice and performance design. She has presented her research in conferences and symposiums in Europe and the UK and has published papers in conference proceedings. Marina is one of the curators of Performance Design Futures organised by CYCSTAT, in Cyprus.

 

Blog

#TeamDieFledermaus

So that you can get to know #TeamDieFledermaus we thought we’d ask our brilliant singers a few questions about their characters:

 

What would your character have in their supermarket shopping trolley?

Falke: Vodka and crisps

Rosalinde: Nappies, formula, Pinot Grigio

Eisenstein: Stella and nappies

Adele: Smashed avocado, honey flavoured lockets, sugar free red bull Read more

Blog

Lunchtime Opera: Different Perspectives

Recently we took our Die Fledermaus adaptation into local community centres so that elderly lunch club groups can hear a professional opera singer and pianist perform live and chat to them about what it’s like to work as a professional musician.

We asked our session leaders to tell us what their favourite moment was: Read more

Blog

Die Fledermaus first road trip!

So after the excitement of our young people’s workshops and our two school parallel productions for Die Fledermaus getting underway, we’re now pleased to tell you about our sessions for local elderly groups across Merton and Wandsworth!

Because our unique street opera concept means that audience members need to be able to stand for most of the performances and walk around to follow the story of our characters around the high street, it means it’s not suitable for those less physically able. So this means that we also go into local elderly organisations and run sessions for them so that they can also engage with our work.

We’re thrilled that shortly we’ll be running sessions at old friends including Merton & Morden Guild and Friends in St Helier, who we previously worked with for Drifting Dragons and A Secret Life as well as going to new organisations including the Alzheimer’s Society.

Our brilliant singers Claire Wild, Abigail Kelly and David Horton will sing a couple of arias for the groups accompanied on piano by Juliane Gallant and Giles Kennedy, talk to them about their work as professional opera singers and pianists while Astrid will talk about the company and show edited filming of the Die Fledermaus Research & Development and our previous Cosi Fan Tutte Street Opera.

We’ll be back in touch soon to let you know how the sessions go and our plans to run further sessions later on in the year! Read more

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And the word was FUN!

We asked Elliott, our workshop leader for the St John Bosco College Parallel Production to give us an idea of what the groups are getting up to….

St Marks Primary School Workshop

In the beginning was the word, and the word was FUN! Toward the tail end of 2018, I was lucky enough to lead taster workshops for both our prospective primary and secondary school cohorts. The plan, to take Baseless Fabric’s modernised version of the classic, ‘Die Fledermaus’ and go wild with it; adding characters and scenes or doing them in new and different ways, learning to sing with correct operatic technique, acting, song and script writing and of course we play games! As you can imagine the reception was fantastic and our taster sessions were so much fun, we had scenes set anywhere from a hilarious family dinner, just after Eisenstein had gotten in trouble with the police, to a party at the top of a mountain and a marriage counselling session between Eisenstein and Rosalinde on the moon. Read more

Blog

So which superhero are you?

We had a great time in our Research & Development rehearsals and sharing last week. Thank you to everyone who came along to see what we’ve been up to so far and give feedback. As well as working hard on the music, staging the scenes and making sure the storyline is clear we also asked our singers a few questions to help you get to know them….

Die Fledermaus R&D

We have a superhero theme to Die Fledermaus. If you could be any superhero who would you be and why?

Claire Wild: I want to be the invisible one from Fantastic Four for a million reasons really, but mostly to be sneaky and overhear conversations.

David Horton: Nightcrawler because he can teleport and is super agile and I’m neither of those things!

Alistair Ollerenshaw: Spiderman – to be super agile and be able to swing from buildings.

Abigail Kelly: Scarlet Witch as she is possibly the most powerful being in the Marvel universe. Read more

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Fancy a sneak peek of our new street opera?

 

This event is in the past. Check out our upcoming productions page for what’s coming up!

The Production

Die Fledermaus is a hugely fun, often silly story with some brilliant characters and very catchy tunes. Die Fledermaus means ‘The Bat’ but in our modern version Bat Man may play a role instead! Funded by the Wimbledon Foundation’s new Arts and Community Engagement Fund (ACE), Arts Council EnglandMerton Council and the Samuel Gardner Memorial Trust, our Die Fledermaus production follows on from the success of our two previous Merton Street Operas Drifting Dragons and Cosi Fan Tutte. Like these previous productions, Die Fledermaus has been cut to approximately an hour, with a new modern English accessible libretto, and with the music re-written for 3 instruments suitable for promenade performance. The final production will take place in summer 2019 with scenes popping up along the high street and with the audience free to follow our characters down the street or just watch one scene. The music has some waltzes this time round so hope you’ll be waltzing down the high street with us!

The Free Sharing

On the 29th November at Wimbledon Theatre Studio we will be presenting a few scenes from our new adaptation, discussing our work and asking for your feedback (duration approximately an hour). If you would like to join us please click to book your ticket now. Tickets are FREE but limited so please register.

 

Blog

Announcing the Cast of Die Fledermaus

We are pleased to announce the cast of Die Fledermaus!

Claire Wild

Claire Wild

Claire Wild attended the Royal Northern College of Music‚ sponsored by the Peter Moores Foundation and the Musicians Benevolent Fund. She won the Webster Booth Award‚ the James Oncken Song Prize and the Frost Brownson Award.      

Highlights in recent seasons include Lilli Vanessi / Katharine in Kiss Me, Kate and Elle La voix humaine for Welsh National Opera, Susanna Le nozze di Figaro for Regents Opera and Petra in A Little Night Music for Opera Project at West Green House, Welsh National Opera as Emma in Khovanshchina and Garsington Opera as Caridad The Skating Rink, a newly commissioned opera by David Sawer. Read more