Companhia de Música Teatral
Paulo Maria Rodrigues and Helena Rodrigues, founders of Companhia de Música Teatral, presented their conference-lecture “Tuning People, Birds and Flowers” at Harvard School of Education in the USA. A lecture full of references to artistic and educational work with people of several ages in different contexts.
On May 21st and 22nd, Companhia de Música Teatral will present Babelim at Theatre de la Ville in Paris as part of the Festival Chantiers d’Europe. Babelim is a participatory and playful show for youngsters that was created within the scope of Opus Tutti project. An artistic creation full of harmony, peace and hope in the future!
Orchestre national d’Île-de-France
Chantons avec l’Orchestre : Welcome to Broadway
Schoolchildren, high school pupils, adult amateur choirs and corporate choruses have been rehearsing some of the greatest musicals each week throughout the year and have also participated in group rehearsals.
They are soon to perform on stage with two professional singers and musicians from the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France conducted by David Charles Abell, with famous pieces from Bernstein and Sondheim such as My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Singin’ in the Rain, The Sound of Music, some of which have featured in Walt Disney films.
This participatory project will be staged by Edouard Signolet, director in residence at the Orchestra.
Four performances are planned in Île-de-France and at the Philharmonie de Paris from May 31 to June 5, 2018.
Opera Mint
Opera Mint is holding a summer school in Cardiff 22-25 July 2018.
Classes, from eminent practitioners in the field, will include coaching in romantic opera,drama classes for singers, and Alexander Technique.
Contact sara.clethero@operamint.co.uk for further details.
Opera Mint have also recently completed an animated film of Ravel’s L’enfant et les Sortilèges by Ravel, in an English translation by Zoë Challenor with community singers in many of the roles. It will also be the subject of a presentation at the Singing Symposium at the Memorial University of Newfoundland this year.
Clare Guss-West
Moving Towards Mental Wellbeing
Uniting Culture and Health
22nd May 2018, 16h -18h, Room P3C050,
European Parliament, Brussels.
Clare Moody MEP, Julie Ward MEP and The Dance & Creative Wellness Foundation are delighted to invite you to ‘Moving Towards Mental Wellbeing’, an informative forum highlighting innovation in preventative mental health through dance. Dance has an essential role to play in positive health. Backed by evidence-based research, the Dance & Creative Wellness Foundation promotes adapted dance interventions and the training of dancers to deliver effective, creative approaches that enhance health and mental wellbeing. Such interventions are primed to provide a much needed ‘buffer’ for ourhealthcare systems as they support positive health, preventing against deterioration to more serious mental health complications and the need for specialist treatment.
Join us for an inspirational session in which we demonstrate and debate the benefits both financial and social of developing dance as an intervention for mental wellness.
Clare Moody (MEP), Julie Ward (MEP),
Eldridge Labinjo, Andrew Greenwood & Clare Guss-West (Dance & Creative Wellness)
Formal RSVP please by 7 May: clare@danceandcreativewellness.com
Walpurgis
FIDELIO Opera-tale
OPERADAGEN ROTTERDAM
DATES :
Saturday 26 MAY 2018 at 15h30
Sundag 27 MAY 2018 at 15H30
Dutch version
duration 45 minutes
from 6 years old
Fidelio is a liberating and captivating opera-tale for children who are eager for adventures. Plunged into the vibrant music of Beethoven, they can experience their first opera. The audience is seated amid the singers. This proximity allows them to share the adventures of Léonore.
Creation, design, booklet and staging Judith Vindevogel
Interpretation and singing Dutch version Annelies Van Hijfte and Astrid Stockman (sopranos), Kurt Gysen (baritone), French version Liesbeth Devos and Astrid Stockman (sopranos), Ronan Dubois (baritone), Film actor Saïd Boumazoughe Sound universe and live piano Jago Moons Scenography Stef Depover Mask and puppet Filip Peeters.
Production WALPURGIS and Hetpaleis (BE)
Co-production Theater of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines – Scène nationale (FR)
With the support of La Monnaie (BE) and La Gare Franche, Marseille (FR)
With the help of l’ARCADI Île-de- France and the Flemish government.
In the press: “The result is remarkable, tousles somewhat and brings an immediate engagement because the storyline is strong and the play, who glides fluidly from mime to dialogue, is balanced. This Fidélio is an entry into stimulating opera. » La Revue du Spectacle, Jean Grapin.
A touching opera-tale which ends with the ‘Ode to Joy’, sung in choir. I loved it! » Télérama Sortir Paris, Françoise Sabatier-Morel.
Compagnie Opera.3
Throughout 2017-2018 the Compagnie Opéra.3 has been working with the département des Hauts de Seine on the project Choeur des Collèges (Middle school choir).
In 2014-2015 the production “What a day!” enabled 400 middle school pupils to perform an adapted version of Bernstein’s Candide at the Théâtre des Amandiers de Nanterre and the Théâtre des Sablons in Neuilly sur Seine.
This year, Wagner’s Flying Dutchman will be honored in an original arrangement entitled “The Legend of the Flying Dutchman” for 600 school pupils, a soprano, tenor, piano, electric guitar and actor.
Performances will take place on June 12 and 14 at the Seine Musicale de Boulogne Billancourt.
More info here
Glyndebourne
In February 2019 Glyndebourne is staging a brand new opera called Agreed, written by composer Howard Moody and directed by Simon Iorio. Agreed is a large-scale community opera that will be performed on the Glyndebourne stage with world-class singers and accompanied by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
Two lovers, two communities, a separated family: Agreed tells a story of love and divided lands. Torn by violence and unrest, conscience rises and the people and their leader are forced to accountability.
More info here
Opéra national de Paris
As part of its young audience programming, the Opéra national de Paris will stage Le Petit Bain by Johanny Bert of the Théâtre de Romette on 16 – 22 May. The production is suitable for very young spectators and their caregivers.
It’s a man having a bath.
No, it’s a dancer sculpting clouds.
No, it’s more like a cloud taking a dancer in its arms.
No, it’s more like a man creating landscapes so as to disappear in them.
No, it’s something else again.
Le Petit Bain uses a concrete substance that is both recognisable for children and potentially abstract, a playground for the imagination: bubblebath. The dancer’s body confronts this fascinating matter, taming it into shapes, sculpting the foam and juggling with the bubbles just as he plays with our imagination.
The Académie’s end-of-season activities for young audiences will also include two artistic practice workshops aimed at families, facilitated by Louis Combeau and based on Jiři Kylián (5 May) and Sasha Waltz’s Romeo and Juliet (26 May).
Furthermore, the “Petits violons” and dance classes of the Dix Mois d’École et d’Opéra programme will meet at the Amphithéâtre Bastille on 2 June for an original performance in which seventy school pupils will combine their energies around the theme of light and shadow.
More info:
« Jiři Kylián, My Parents and I » workshop
« Sasha Waltz, Romeo and Juliet, My Parents and I » workshop
Petits violons et Danse evening
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
This summer the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence will present Ce Murmure dans la nuit du monde, a production that combines object theater, puppetry, masks, music and song to explore questions of displacement, exile and flight.
The creation interweaves various disciplines and languages, including theater, puppetry, shadow theater, music, song, live drawing and movement as well as the gestures of the instrumentalist, as orchestral scores.
On stage, three characters, aedes, figures inspired by the hakawati, traditional Arab storytellers and itinerant showers of images, who through art restore a human and sensitive dimension to displacement, migration, exile and flight.
These characters, themselves wanderers, carry with them both day-to-day and more unusual objects, such as musical instruments or the window frame of a window of a house they had to flee. By doing so, they reconfigure the inner geography of man.
For both themselves and their audiences, they propose to recover the natural propensity of humankind to relate to the world in a poetic and sensitive manner.
When physical geography is no longer a refuge, when no land is welcoming enough to put an end to wanderings, when no return is possible, one of the only places to create a possible refuge is the intangible world of music and song.
Musical fairytale / Puppet and shadow theatre
– Creation: Collectif Kahraba (Lebanon)
– Stage direction: Aurélien Zouki
– Music: Dzovinar Mikirditsian
Suitable for young audiences and families
Performances:
Friday 20 July 2018 | 3pm & 8pm | Bois de l’Aune
Saturday 21 July 2018 | 11am & 3pm | Bois de l’Aune
More info about the 2018 Aix-en-Provence festival here
Main photo © Companhia de Música Teatral