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English Touring Opera Live on Stage - Performance 1

English Touring Opera Live on Stage - Performance 1

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19 October 2020

LYRIC SOLITUDE - performance 1 of 4

English Touring Opera are thrilled to return to live performance this Autumn, with a programme focusing on the voice of the individual in isolation, on the power of song, and of poetry - with responses to that power in dance, image and drama.  The Garrick is delighted to host ETO's 4 separate performances over this weekend, starting with Friday evening featuring the following:
  • Boyhood’s End (Tippett)
  • The Holy Sonnets of John Donne (Britten)
  • Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Shostakovich)
  • The Heart’s Assurance (Tippett)
  • A Charm of Lullabies (Britten)
Total duration 60 mins Remember your lovers who gave you more than love – Sidney Keyes The drama of living in a state of war runs through this programme, featuring responses in movement made to the music and poetry. Thomas Elwin (tenor) is the soloist in the ecstatic Boyhood’s End (1943), to which Paul Chantry and Rae Piper make response in dance. Elwin is also the soloist in The Heart’s Assurance - the most remarkable and fearless setting of poetry by young men who fought and died in WW2. These poems, thrusting sensual desire into a landscape of death, finds response in movement by Bernadette Iglich. Iglich also sets Britten’s eloquent, searing response to what he saw at the concentration camp at Belsen at the end of the war in The Holy Sonnets of John Donne. Donne’s sonnets ravish and twist, and call out for love and understanding. They are sung by tenor Richard Dowling. Mezzo soprano Katie Stevenson is the soloist in Shostakovich’s tribute to Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva, an utterly unique voice in the maelstrom of the inter-war and war years. Choreographer Rahel Vonmoos has devised a response in movement. Stevenson is also the soloist in Britten’s bizarre A Charm of Lullabies, composed on poems by William Blake, Robert Burns, Robert Greene, Thomas Randolph and John Phillip - maybe not the kind of thing to sing you to sleep ...
The bar will be open before and after the show. Come and join us in a friendly, informal and Covid-19 safe atmosphere, to witness this unique fusion of music, dance, image and drama ... as well as to avail yourself of our low bar prices and free car park !

ETO's Lyric Solitude at the Garrick

We are hosting 4 performances from English Touring Opera over the weekend: Note: apart from La Voix Humaine being performed twice, all other pieces are being performed just once only.
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