Seven angels have fallen through space and time for so long, they have forgotten why. Coming to rest on a desert landscape, they imagine the creation of a legendary garden that once flourished there and its destruction from greed and neglect.
Inspired by Paradise Lost, Seven Angels interprets the themes of John Milton’s masterpiece for a modern audience facing up to the urgent challenges of a changing climate and ever-depleting resources.
This is the long-awaited first opera from Luke Bedford one of the UK’s leading young composers. Luke’s Or Voit Tout en Aventure, in 2007 was hailed by The Guardian as “one of the most outstanding pieces by any young composer I’ve ever experienced – music of brooding expressive intensity and charged with that indefinable quality that makes a piece sound as if it was written out of sheer necessity.”
Featuring seven singers and a live chamber orchestra, Luke Bedford’s music is dark but seductive, tense but lyrical and integrates both solo voices and choral textures. The opera’s post-apocalyptic landscape is realised by Japanese artist Tadasu Takamine.
For details of pre and post show discussions on Seven Angels at your local venue, visit the links in the tour list above.
Thursday 14 July at the Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House: pre-show performance of a new five-minute opera by emerging composer and writer, developed by The Opera Group’s Insight programme. Free to ticket holders. See here for more.
