Opera Warwick hope for sweet success

Opera Warwick have produced a new translation of the classic fairytale ‘Hansel & Gretel’ and will be bringing it to Warwick Arts Centre next term.

A student team collaborated with professional opera composer Kit Hesketh-Harvey, and worked on the translation from the original German manuscript over the summer.

The team then developed the resulting script over a series of workshops, bringing the literal translation to life, writing it to their own concept and setting it to music.

Ben Hamilton, musical director for the performance, said that a big motive behind the production is to “demystify opera and musical theatre and to make it more approachable to a bigger audience. We want to make it exciting and relevant again, so that it will appeal to younger generations.”

The vision of Hamilton and Flips Green, stage director, is to have 120 local children involved in the six performances.

They aim to have three choruses of 40 children, with each taking part in two performances to maximise the number of children involved.

The concept features Hansel and Gretel as impoverished Roma Gypsies living with their parents in Berlin.

One day, the circus comes to town, luring in children, and the story goes on to expose the dark reality behind the colourful front of clowns, acrobats, magicians and lion-tamers led by the evil ringmaster – the adaptation’s answer to the wicked witch.

Putting together the performance has been a labour of love and Green describes the workshops over the summer as being “a lot of fun”.

“Everyone brought something to the group and the fusion of skills has allowed us to create something new and really exciting.”

She added that Hesketh-Harvey “gave so much time and taught us all a huge amount about how to work with both language and music. He was so engaged, it was great.”

Note: The paper article stated that the opera would be performed by local Warwickshire schoolchildren. Although children will be featured in the opera, it will be performed by the members of the Opera Warwick society.