Warwick Uni’s opera, drama, and dance societies have got together and are putting on performances of Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas‘ at a selection of churches around the West Mids, including a show at St Martin’s church on Wed 26 November.

There’s plenty more info on the press release here.

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Set in no particular time this opera draws freely from past, present and future to create an upbeat cautionary tale for discerning audiences of adults and children

It’s a family affair by the looks of things, and will be taking place on Sat 6 Dec at the Town Hall between 11am and 1pm.  The first 45 mins will be a workshop to prepare the kids for singing roles in the chorus for the performance, which will start at 12pm.

Pete at Spaghetti Gazetti reminded me of this. His post also has the flyer and a story about Paul Murphy from back in the day.

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1. Traffic wardens are routinely told to wander around abandoned industrial units in Ladywood at night looking for cars to ticket; or
2. Visitors to (the nationally acclaimed) Birmingham Opera Company’s King Idomeneo are being opportunistically targetted by the city’s traffic wardens.

After hearing council leader Mike Whitby expound on the importance of the arts in the city last night I sincerely hope it’s not the latter.

Now, fair enough, a double-yellow’s a double-yellow and there’s a fire station a couple of roads away that it wouldn’t be very smart to block off.  But why does the response have to be to send people to ticket the cars (and rake in the cash) night after night?  Those streets surround derelict buildings and are deserted in the evenings so surely there’s a more constructive solution.

I understand the Opera Company have actually been managing the limited parking availability as well as possible – stewards are telling people where not to park and they’ve put on buses from the Town Hall – so there’s a sense of satisfaction when the wardens (allegedly responding to ‘a complaint’) are unable to ticket anyone.  Maybe, in hindsight, the Company should have contacted the council themselves to put extra arrangements in place.

Birmingham Opera Company are busting a gut to do something spectacular, putting Birmingham on the map (for the right reasons) and providing something genuinely exciting to attract new audiences and people from outside the city.

Why on earth would anyone from the city want to stand in their way?

By the way, I’ve tried to be a proper journo about this and have called the council’s press office for a response but I’m still waiting for that and, heck, there’s a comment box below.  If I do hear back from anyone I’ll update this post.

Oh, and the final performances of King Idomeneo are tonight and tomorrow – if you’ve not gone yet then please do, it’s great.

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If you spot a review, some photos, film or whatever (or produce something yourself) then let me know in the comments.  I’ll be searching out what I can and hopefully we’ll collect together some interestingness.

First up the Birmingham Opera Company website and the Birmingham Opera Design Brains Trust blog which has profiles of the people involved and sneak previews from July when rehearsals were going on and the building was being prepared.

Reviews

• Guardian
• The Times
• Birmingham Post
• John Mostyn
• Ennuyer.net
• Metro
• Pete Ashton
• The Stirrer
• Whatsonstage Midlands
• The Observer
• The Telegraph
• The Independent
• Andy Pryke
• Russ L

Photos

• chai wallah
• Birmingham Post
• Pete Ashton

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I went to the full dress rehearsal of Birmingham Opera Company’s King Idomeneo on Sunday night and loved it. What’s not to like about an abandoned factory stuffed with shipping containers, opera singers, dirt and orange trees?

Anyway, I have two tickets for tonight’s proper opening show to give away to the first person who shouts up for them in the comments.

Here are some guidelines:

• No-one associated with CiB (that includes Creative Republic types) can claim the tickets
• First to claim the tickets in the comments wins
• But feel free to stake a claim after the first post, just in case (see below)
• I need to give your real name to the ticket-giving people.  If you post under a pseudonym then remember to use a real email address.  If I you don’t reply to a confirmatory email quick enough and/or I think you’re messing about I’ll work my way down the list of commenters
• Tickets are to be collected on the door no later than 6.30pm today, 12 August 2008 – don’t claim them if you can’t make it (it sounds obvious but…)
• My decision on anything and everything is final

If whoever goes would be good enough to blog about the show or send me a review to post on CiB that’d be great.  Not essential or anything but it’d be nice.

If you don’t win the tickets then maybe consider buying one and going along anyway.  You’re not likely to get the chance to see anything like this for a while.

Finally, the Birmingham Post’s photographer was there on Sunday so you can see some pics to get an idea of what it was all about.  There’s more info in my last post about it and on the Birmingham Opera Company website.

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Firstly, the first performance will be on 12 August but there’s a free dress rehearsal taking place on Sunday 10 August at 7pm.  If you’d like to go down to that then email boxoffice@birminghamopera.org.uk to reserve your place.

The production will be a walkabout affair allowing the audience to ‘move with the action around the performance space’.  Comfy shoes are recommended because it’s a 3 hour performance (with interval).

The venue is an abandoned rubber factory just off Ladywood Middleway (directions are here).  Here’s what the place looked like a little while ago:

The Birmingham Opera Design Trust blog has profiles of the people involved in bringing this production to life as well as the odd tidbit about how things are coming together and is worth a read.

More info on the perfomance is available on the Birmingham Opera Company website and you can buy tickets through the REP’s booking system.  Finally, here’s the flyer:

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As it says on the website:

We don’t have an opera house and we don’t work in conventional theatres. We conjure our theatres out of spaces used for other purposes or maybe just abandoned

Not arf.  This time they’ve taken over the empty Sherborne Rubber Factory building just off Ladywood Middleway (map here).

There are a few details on the Birmingham Opera Company site but there’s more to come soon.  Although it does say performances will be roughly every other day between 12 and 23 August and tickets will be on sale soon.

Head nod to the Audiences Central blog.

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“The issue has never been, ‘is this good quality work?’ The issue is that the work happens infrequently, so how can we ensure that a company which claims to be about community opera actually is part of the community.

“Each of their projects tends be a one-off which is very exciting, but what happens afterwards? Can we have a programme of year round activities, maybe by developing partnerships? That’s the issue.

© pete for Created in Birmingham, 2008. | One comment |

Well, as anyone who has dealt with the Arts Council will expect, the reasons have nothing to do with art or excellence. The Arts Council is miffed that BOC hasn’t established a “third income stream”. In other words, it doesn’t get much private funding, so relies too heavily on public subsidy.

That’s firstly untrue (its recent Traviata was backed by £50,000 from the Moores Foundation); secondly based on too narrow a definition of private support (many local companies support it “in kind” by donating premises or goods – such as those coffins in Giovanni); and thirdly misses the point. Of course swanky sponsors aren’t going to be attracted to opera presented on gritty industrial estates: where would they ply their clients with champers and canapés? But does this mean that opera must always be staged in venues where the middle-classes feel comfortable? Is that the view of James Purnell, the new Culture Secretary?

The underlying truth seems to be that Vick is a maverick, and the company he created and to which he lovingly returns (between directing engagements with every great opera company in the world) is created in his image – ie, structurally unconventional. Far too much so, clearly, for the pen-pushers at the Arts Council, who complain about BOC’s “high-risk strategy” as if risk is a bad thing in the arts.

via D’log

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They currently get £324,000 from the Arts Council and £197,000 from the city council. While the former has been removed they can apply for a “project grant” capped at £100,000, though getting this is not guaranteed.

According to The Post “The Arts Council is understood to have disapproved of the company’s decision to bring Vick’s production of La Traviata to the NIA, regarding it as too great a financial risk.

This production (blogged about in advance here and here with post-performance responses collated here and here) sold 9,908 of the 10,000 seats and, while profits were slim, was generally considered a success. Here’s a photo:

What sets Birmingham Opera apart from other opera companies is their pathalogical desire to bring people into opera who wouldn’t normally do it, not just watching but performing. Which, personally, confuses the hell out of me since I thought that’s what you needed to do to get Arts Council funding these days.

The closing quote from the AC does sort of answer this though:

“While we recognise the quality of Birmingham Opera Company’s work, we have been talking to them for some time to flag our concerns about aspects of their business and financial models. We are still in constructive talks to explore other funding opportunities available to them.”

In other words, they were told to sort the books out or face losing the money and they didn’t. Of course the timing of this decision, coming along with a massive reduction in arts funding, does make this reasoning rather suspect.

Naturally, Birmingham Opera are planning to fight this and have a chance to appeal this month. One thing they want to do is get a forum or similar set up on their website so their wide and disparate support network can come together and build a strategy. This needs to happen as soon as possible so if someone web-savvy can help them get something up and running quickly please get in touch with them. I don’t think it needs to be anything complicated – phpbb should do. (I’d do it but I’m sort of not around…)

The 2007 review will continue tomorrow…

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I also found a nice Guardian piece on the 10 teenagers who took part in the opera with no prior experience as part of BOC’s legendary outreach program.

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Not a huge number of blog posts found so far.

Marc Reck (with photos)

Nadeem Shabir (with photos)

Andy Pryke

Charlotte Carey

The Stirrer

Birmingham Post review

Any more, leave a link in the comments.

© pete for Created in Birmingham, 2007. | One comment |

Previously on CiB

© pete for Created in Birmingham, 2007. | One comment |

You’ve probably seen the flyers and advertising for La Traviata taking place at the NIA on 25th and 26th October. I hadn’t given it much thought to be honest, assuming it to be a fleeting touring thing, but a smidgen of investigation reveals there to be a significant Birmingham connection. I know this because Marc Reck posted this video on his blog:

If you don’t have time to watch that, in short this production was devised by Birmingham Opera’s Artistic Director Graham Vick for the world-renowned Arena di Verona. As the Italian production used local talent so this one gathers 240 singers from Birmingham along with the CBSO providing the music. Actors are drawn from the company’s work in the local community over the years and while the costumes and sets are being shipped from Verona.

So, while this is an international event, it’s also a testament to the Birmingham Opera Company who, according to their online history, do much more than large-scale Italian classics at the NIA:

Two things were clear: Firstly we would open up the process of opera production and ask people from the city to join us. Secondly we would perform the work in unusual places not normally associated with opera or theatre. We wanted to circumvent the idea that certain kinds of people went to certain kinds of places to see opera. This way the operas themselves could speak directly to audiences.

Since 2001 we have presented Berg’s Votzek in a dilapidated warehouse on the edge of the Ladywood housing estate, Beethoven’s Fidelio in a big top pitched in Aston Park beside Aston Villa FC and Bernstein’s Candide in an old car parts factory in Digbeth. Now we are exploring the work of Monteverdi through a series of projects during 2004 leading to a large-scale production of Ulysses Comes Home in Spring 2005 to be directed by Artistic Director, Graham Vick and with internationally renowned tenor Paul Nilon in the title role.

Tickets for La Trav range from £15 – £45 from here.

Further info:
Wikipedia on La Traviata
Birmingham Opera Company website
A fair few photos of the Verona performance on Flickr.

© pete for Created in Birmingham, 2007. | 2 comments |