Richard Ayres New Opera

Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh
Snape Maltings Concert Hall,Snape,Suffolk,IP17 1SP
United Kingdom
+44 (0)1728 687110
http://www.aldeburgh.co.uk

Almeida Ensemble
Conductor: Roland Kluttig
Allison Bell, Anna Burford, Joanna Burton, Simon Butteriss, Jonathan Gunthorpe, Keith Miller & Claire Wild

Music: Richard Ayres
Text: Rozalie Hirs, based on a story by Toon Tellegen

"We twinkle like the stars and we glitter like the river
We're bubbling and rustling and buzzing and bustling"
Richard Ayres's first opera brings to the stage Dutch writer Toon Tellegen's animal stories.
The Cricket wakes up one morning with a gloomy feeling in his head and doesn't know what it is, or how it got there. The elephant can't stop climbing trees, and he has to find a way to kick the habit. Both animals undertake a journey of personal discovery - seeking the opinions of friends, consulting quacks, and surviving dangerous cures, evil nocturnal visits and psychedelic visions.

Tellegen's deceptively simple tales are explorations of grief, joy and the immediacy of life.

Ayres' is a major new voice in contemporary music, a 'manic mélange of the familiar and strange' (Musical Times). He was featured at the 2000 Aldeburgh Festival and last year's Huddersfield Festival. He is joined by surrealist animators Quay Brothers and Music Theatre London founder Nicholas Broadhurst . His regular collaborator, Roland Kluttig, conducts.



Richard Ayres : The Cricket Recovers