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Monthly Opera Clubs starting!

We’re gearing up for an exciting few months with projects starting in March with two of our longterm partners in the run up to our street opera production of The Elixir of Love this summer. Over the next few months we will be running monthly sessions at both Roehampton Base Youth Club and the Commonside Trust Elders Lunchclub!  Both groups will learn about the story and characters in The Elixir of Love in our new version; hear an opera singer sing live and up close; learn to sing a section of the opera themselves and other fun activities! We’ll also be listening to the groups to find out what sort of things they’d like to get up to in the sessions and which artists working in opera they’d like to meet and learn from. We can’t wait to get started!!

If you’re local to Roehampton aged 6-18 or local to Pollards Hill aged over 55 and would like to get involved please do get in touch for further information.

Hugest thanks to our funders for supporting this work!

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Drama games, dazzling ideas and descants…

As part of the adaptation process to re-write The Elixir of Love into a modern English street opera for London life today, the team this year are also working with two local community groups who we wanted to engage further in the process of our work.

Previously when we’ve done our street performances at and around Roehampton Base Youth Club we’ve had such fantastic responses from the brilliant young people that we thought it would be a good idea to visit them at a much earlier stage of the process. And what an amazing time we had with the group! SO much laughter and SO many brilliant ideas from all of the young people and staff. Nadege led drama games, Leo played the bassoon, Claire sang and led vocal warm ups, and we discussed The Elixir of Love and ideas for who the characters would be and how the story might work in London today. The group were just as brilliant at Eastenders Zip Zap Boing as helping us sort out some of the story’s problems! Thank you so much to everyone involved, to the brilliant Roehampton Base team for organising, to Arts Council England for funding – and we absolutely can’t wait to be back very soon!