Visionary opera company Tête à Tête return to host its third Tête à Tête – The Opera Festival, presenting over thirty new works in its biggest programme yet of entirely 21st century drama and storytelling led by music and the voice.  The Festival goes from strength to strength, featuring more partnerships with national companies, up to six performances a night at Riverside Studios, plus opera in unlikely and surprising places across Hammersmith and Fulham. Tête à Tête – the Opera Festival presents an incredible array of international artists, all eager to shift the goal posts and stretch the operatic form to put the kick into this most immediate, engaging, consuming and sweaty of art forms.

“It has been thrilling to experience the rate at which Tête à Tête – The Opera Festival has grown, in only two years, from a sprinkling of staged performances mixed with cabaret and concerts to a huge programme jam-packed with entirely new stage works.  By exploring not what opera is but what it might become, this is a powerful glimpse into what looks like a really vigorous future.” 
Bill Bankes-Jones, Artistic Director

The final touches are being put on the Festival programme right now but highlights already include the London premiere of The Weatherman, Opera North’s new chamber opera celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, composed by Paul Clark (The Clod Ensemble) and librettist John Binias. The incredible talents of siblings composer/singer/pianist Errollyn and jazz composer/trumpeter Byron Wallen explore the untold story of their extraordinary upbringing in Wallen. Stellar opera singer Sally Burgess in her directorial debut with Ula, a work in progress showing of a haunting new opera-thriller that makes connections between a remote Scottish Village and the film world of New York (music by Mark Glentworth, words Carolyn Herail).

The demand for a space where artistic risk is encouraged continues to grow apace. Tête à Tête – The Opera Festival successfully responds to this by providing a supportive environment which allows artists to take real gambles in making daring new work, and a public platform where this work can be showcased and developed hand-in-hand with the encouragement of its audiences. The Festival satisfies the growing desire of international artists from both opera and other disciplines to explore and re-define the operatic genre – be they singers, composers, actors, designers, librettists, directors or audiences.

Shadowplays provides a great example of the sort of bold experimentation engendered by the Festival.  Featuring a singing contortionist, performing shadows and video, Shadowplays explores the interdependence between shadow and substance, inspired by Dada artist Kurt Schwitters and created by director/artist Roswitha Gerlitz, composer Catherine Kontz and set/costume designer Ellan Parry, all brought together through previous Festivals.  Opera and dance come together in Medousa, a constantly evolving work by Vocal Motions Elastic Theatre and devised by Jacek Ludwo Scarso.  The wonderfully engaging clarinettist Neyire Ashworth steps out of the pit to tell the riveting story of her Anglo-Turkish upbringing using only her own voice and clarinet in Stolen Voices.

Supporting the development of new work is central to Tête à Tête’s activity and this year’s Festival sees the world stage premiere of Brian Inglis’ one woman opera The Song of Margery Kemp following last year’s concert presentation.  Billed as Alan Bennet’s Talking Heads meets The Exorcist, the incomparable mezzo soprano Loré Lixenberg stars in a radically stripped-down operatic experience of a solo singer with no instrumental accompaniment.  Tête à Tête’s own Lite Bites are a key part of the festival, commissioning micro operas of just 5 minutes in length that are performed in public spaces across the borough including Lyric Square, Ravenscourt Park, Bishop’s Park and Fulham Palace. Last year’s Lite Bites featured possibly the world’s first opera in a zorb ball plus the brilliant Agony of the Knife Thrower’s Assistant which returns this year as part of a longer new opera Circus Tricks by Adey Grummet and Mike Henry, and a playful exploration of the “happy-ever-after” by Laura Bowler and Alasdair Middleton again being developed into a longer piece, Long Ago and Far Away this year.   Watch this space for this year’s offerings which include works by Joanna Lee & Howard Skempton, Joe Cutler & Peter Burt, and Jordan Hunt & John Joseph Bibby. 

Opera’s Umbrella body, the Opera and Music Theatre Forum recently revealed that 21% of members’ repertoire in the UK is 21st-century works, and that a major strand of this activity is education work. Tête à Tête is very happy to showcase this fastest growing area of new opera with a weekend of exciting activity featuring a collaboration between director Karen Gillingham, composer Hannah Conway and cellist/singer Matthew Sharp and Glyndebourne’s Youth Groups 3 and 4 in a new piece inspired by Dvorak’s Rusalka. Welsh National Opera Max brings The Kidz R Us choir for their first trip to London for performances at Riverside Studios and also a local old people’s home in Hammersmith.

Tête à Tête is passionate about making new opera enjoyable and available for everyone.  Whether its commissioning new 15 minute mini operas, performing at Knitting & Stitching Shows with Shetland knitters and spinners or encouraging people to come dressed as a nurse and get into new opera for free, a spirit of pleasure and delight pervades all of Tête à Tête’s work.  Tête à Tête – The Opera Festival is no exception with its format of up to six shows a night revolving around the opportunity to relax by the river with a drink and bite to eat, chat with artists and discuss what you’ve seen, all finishing with a good old knees up - what’s not to enjoy?

Tête à Tête has established a peerless reputation for bringing hugely innovative small-scale opera of outstanding quality to the widest possible audience.  High quality intimate, uplifting and pioneering productions such as the worlds first opera about giving birth (PUSH!), a collaboration with knitters and spinners from Shetland (Odysseus Unwound) and evenings of bite sized chamber operas with six librettists and composers (Shorts, Six-Pack, Blind Date) have received rave reviews and delighted audiences new and old.