News
The Golden Fish
Second-year music undergraduates are currently working on a new opera for children in collaboration with Karen Gillingham (director), Susi Zumpe (vocal animateur) and Bernie Roberts (designer) from Garsington Opera as part of their Opera and Music Theatre course.
The music for the opera The Golden Fish has been composed by the students themselves under the director of Dr Martyn Harry. The opera will be prefaced by workshops with the children, which Oxford students will get experience of running. Performances will be taking place in The Auditorium, St John's College on Tuesday 18 and Wednesday 19 January, to specially invited audiences from seven local primary schools.
The creation of the opera forms part of a new undergraduate course ('List C'), devised by Dr Harry, in which undergraduates engage with opera and music theatre historically, theoretically and practically.
Dr Harry writes: 'There are no preconceptions about the nature or subject matter of the new work we are creating, for so much depends on the specific musical, acting and physical talents of the participants who take part. Our general approach is to compose a certain amount of music in advance of the first rehearsal, based upon what all participants are interested in singing and in playing; and then to devise the theatre as an ensemble in the rehearsal process itself. This lends an extraordinary fluidity to the final production, as students can take on entirely different roles in different scenes.
'Another liberating aspect of this project is the aim of creating modern art for children audiences. This compels us to put aside a lot of assumptions and come up with direct, striking material that will excite and inspire them.
'Ultimately the production becomes a vehicle for teaching and learning at the end of the course, when the lectures (about opera and music theatre in the 20th century) begin. There may seem to be a large gulf between our opera production and the issues covered in the course, but students will I'm sure be surprised at how their own experience informs their understanding of the relationship between music and drama.'