News

‘A Visit To Friends’ premiere at Snape Maltings

Britten Pears Arts opened the Aldeburgh Festival with Colin Matthews first opera, ‘A Visit To Friends’. The ‘fine’ cast of Susanna Hurrell as Natalie/Nadia, Lotte Betts-Dean as ‘Vanessa/Varia, Marcus Farnsworth as Marcus/Misha, Ed Hawkins as Gregor, Gary Matthewman as Chris, and Shosty the dog as Chekhov’s dog, was conducted by Jessica Cottis with the Aurora Orchestra and directed by Rachel Hewer.

“The small cast was uniformly excellent: Susanna Hurrell a bright, brittle Nadia/Natalie” Flora Wilson - The Guardian ****

“Written with consummate skill and grateful on the ear, it’s an opera that should be taken up by any company desirous to prove there’s still life in the genre” Barry Millington - The Standard ****

“much of the music is gorgeous - gorgeously played by the Aurora orchestra, gorgeously sung by… Susanna Hurrell” Richard Morrison - The Times ****

“Harnessed deftly to Boyd’s text, sung with clarity of diction by the main principals… Hurrell, bright-voiced and alert, mixed innocence and desire.” Fiona Maddocks - The Observer

The Stage ****

“Exzess - Eine Techno Oper” wins the Prix Italia

Written for RBB radio by Noam Brusilovsky and Tobias Pürfürst, Exzess is the real-life story of a woman who overdoses and dies in one of Berlin’s most famous clubs. The piece explores the idolising of the club scene, as well as the idolising of operatic heroines, and compares the eery grandeur of a death through partying into transcendence with the glorification of the soprano death scene in operas - Jessica is a modern day Violetta.

Awarded the prestigious Prix Italia, the jury described it: "An innovative, bold and daring programme with incredible sound design - and a new genre? The programme makers called it a techno-opera, but we think it's actually a new genre. This “operamentary” demonstrates the true art of radio with its winning combination of passionate, taboo-breaking storytelling, topicality and brand new music composition."