Grimeborn 2012 – an alternative festival of opera

The Emperor of Atlantis is a haunting satire written in the Terezin concentration camp before the composer’s deportation to Auschwitz.

The Grimeborn opera festival returns this month to the Arcola theatre for its sixth year, with a programme that intends to provide an alternative to the ‘dinner jackets and picnics’ of the traditional English summer opera season.

This year the festival will see the UK première of Philip Glass’s The Sound of a Voice, a piece exploring dimensions of human intimacy through the figure of an ageing Japanese warrior.

Classic operas by Puccini, Verdi and Mozart are also on the bill, as well as new ones dealing with provocative themes, such as Unleashed by Philip Venables, an opera that focuses on sexual violence between men.

Describing itself as ‘London’s hippest opera festival’, Grimeborn aims to challenge traditional perceptions of opera and attract younger audiences with its accessible ticket prices.

Leyla Nazli, co-founder of the Arcola, is curating this year’s festival. “The idea has always been to do operas that are rarely done and also to give opportunities for young composers to try out something and develop their work within a low budget,” she says.

“This year we have some operas running over two or three days, like Il Tabarro by Puccini and Rigoletto by Verdi. These are full-length operas that most people would struggle to afford to see at the Royal Opera House.”

“We’re bringing opera to a theatrical environment so that the people of Hackney can see major operas and not have to pay ten quid to sit right at the top of the balcony where you can hardly see anything at all. ”

In an attempt, perhaps, to show the diversity of opera and appeal to the largest audience possible, Nazli has taken a chance on some untried works, as well as some overlooked curios and a dramatic re-telling of Hansel and Gretel by Eurovision flop Engelbert Humperdinck.

“Some of the pieces in the festival are completely new, some haven’t been produced in England before and some short pieces, like Bastien und Bastienne, which is an opera Mozart wrote when he was 12 years old, are very rarely produced,” Nazli continues.

With the Arcola currently undergoing renovations, the entire festival will be held in the Arcola Tent. But although the venue will be the same for each opera, the music will resonate from some radically different musical ensembles. Nazli confirms: “Some pieces are just with the piano, some a huge orchestra and some use instruments I can hardly recognise, like the Japanese instruments in Sound of a Voice. It’s quite modern opera in that respect.”

Despite the use of subtitles, opera can still seem inaccessible on account of it being in a different language. For Nazli, the intimate setting of the Arcola solves the issue.

“We want the shows to be accessible so that you don’t feel that you are watching opera,” she adds.

“The performers will be so near to you that you’ll be watching them only a metre away. When this happens you are living in the scene and forget if you are understanding the words because the action and the singing takes you. Basically you forget that you are watching opera.

The Grimeborn festival is at the Arcola Tent  from 21 August – 8 September.