Opera makes overtures to sleeper train passengers
● Travellers treated to free show on Aberdeen London route
An opera production has been staged on a railway sleeper service for the first time.
A 25-minute piece inspired by luggage carried by railway passengers, was created by two music festivals and unveiled on the Aberdeenlondon service.
“Belongings” was staged under a collaboration betweenthe Tête à Tête opera festival in London and the Aberdeen-based soundfestival.
Tenor Robert Lewis and cellist Zosia Jogodzinska performed its seven movements in the train’s lounge car as it travelled south ahead of the launch of the eve of the tenth Tête à Tête festival.
The piece, which features a score by Samuel Bordoli and libretto and direction by Bill Bankes-jones, will be staged again on the Caledonian Sleeper service heading north from London to Aberdeen in November.
Pop-up performances will also run throughout Tête à Tête at King’s Cross station until the middle of August and at the soundfestival, which is staged across Aberdeenshire each autumn.
Mr Bankes-jones said: “Our performance on the sleeper was designed to welcome audiences from two of the countries’ most creative cities to sample new music and works.”
With the show unpublicised beforehand and free to all those with a Caledonian Sleeper ticket, the initiative engaged with a demographic not traditionally linked to opera.
Performing opera outside of opera houses dates back as far as 1607, when the popularity of the art form meant audiences could not be contained to traditional venues.
“Since then it has been hosted in a huge range of locations, from nightclubs and car parks to beaches, and a recording of Die Zauberflöte’s “Der Hölle Rache” has even made it into space.
Tête à Tête is itself no stranger to unconventional venues – their 2011 festival saw forty-eight performances of four different shows performed in a range of places across west London, from pubs and park to shopping centres and markets.
Back in 2006 the event partnered with knitters and spinners on the Shetland Islands for their show Odysseus Unwound, the first opera to be performed in Shetland.
Fiona Robertson, director of soundfestival, said: “As part of a number of projects to help increase access to new music, soundfestival has staged operas in a range of unusual places including a lighthouse and a stable, and even on a bus.
“We were delighted to be able to take this initiative forward with special performances on the sleeper. We hope hearing this opera will encourage people to come and enjoy more performances.”