OperaUpClose present Riders to the Sea, with a new dramatic prologue and chamber orchestration by Michael Betteridge.
Weaving together live performance, projection and recorded sound to create a more intimate, visceral telling of the Vaughan Williams opera, this one act tragedy follows a family in an ancient fishing community haunted by the grief of losing nearly all of their male members at sea. As matriarch Maurya and her daughters try to carry on with their lives, remaining son Bartley finds himself drawn back home, setting off a chain of seemingly inevitable events.
Riders to the Sea sees OperaUpClose’s trademark reframing of a classic to explore universal themes of love, duty, grief, identity and humankind’s relationship with the natural world. A cast of opera singers and instrumentalists will have equal agency as storytellers, removing traditional barriers between pit, stage and audience in a similar vein to the company’s 2023 version of The Flying Dutchman, enabling intense and direct musical storytelling.
Originally written as a play by JM Synge, the opera by much loved composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was first performed in 1937. Composer and conductor Michael Betteridge has now reimagined the score into a new chamber orchestration for oboe, clarinet and accordion with Director Flora McIntosh bringing the narrative into the 21st Century as an exploration in reconciling traumatic memory.
The production also features a specially commissioned choral Prologue The Last Bit of Moon, with a poetic libretto co-written by local Solent group of writers and poets ArtfulScribe’s Community Sirens Collective who are led by cross-disciplinary artist Antosh Wojzik. Set to music by Michael Betteridge the chorus has been recorded by a network of male and low-voice community choirs from across the UK including The Sunday Boys.
The show will kick off a five week UK tour starting in January at MAST Mayflower Studios Southampton (30 Jan) and will visit Exeter (5th Feb), Plymouth (7-8th Feb), Chichester (11th Feb), Hull (21-22nd Feb), Oxford (25-26th Feb) and Blackpool (3rd March) where The Sunday Boys will perform The Last Bit of the Moon live.
Listings
Riders to the Sea: 18 February 2025
Artsdepot. 5 Nether St, London N12 0GA
Tickets from £18 - BOOK NOW
Further Information: OperaUpClose