We are delighted to be working with the singer Cassiopeia Berkeley-Agyepong and the pianist Yshani Perinpanayagam in our forthcoming project:
Our current and forthcoming projects include the following:
Joséphine
Joséphine Baker Cassiopeia Berkeley-Agyepong Musical director Yshani Perinpanayagam Director Emily Ling Williams Videographer Andrea Marcovecchio
Joséphine tells the story, with text, visuals and movement, of the American–French dancer, singer and actress Joséphine Baker, notorious for her banana dance, but also a civil rights activist, champion of women’s rights, intrepid French Resistance fighter and ‘the most sensational woman anyone ever saw’ (Hemingway).
The colourful scene of 1920s Paris is set with three classic silent shorts from the period, their sound-tracks played live:
Ghosts Before Breakfast (Hans Richter, 1928), score by Jean Hasse. The film, which features Hindemith and Milhaud, among others, is a cult classic with surreal sequences of flying bowler hats, teacups magically filling by themselves and animations that anticipate those of Monty Python’s Flying Circus by half a century.
Fall of the House of Usher (Watson & Webber, 1928), score by Jean Hasse. The film, based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe, features Melville Webber, also the screenwriter.
Entr’acte (René Clair, 1924), score by Luke Styles. The celebrated and influential film features Picabia, Satie, Duchamp, Man Ray, Auric and Clair himself.
All three films utilise avant-garde experimental techniques, including superimpositions, visualising supernatural phenomena for dramatic or comic effect. Subscribing to the Dada aesthetic, they also prefigure Expressionistic cinema of the following decade.
Premiere: Wimbledon International Festival, 17 November 2024, with further performances at Newbury Spring Festival (15 May 2025), Deal Festival (6 July 2025) Buxton Festival (July 2025)
Kokoschka's Doll/The Art of Love: Alma Mahler's Life and Music
John Tomlinson in Kokoschka's Doll.
Rozanna Madylus and John Tomlinson in The Art of Love.
Kokoschka's Doll, featuring Sir John Tomlinson, Rozanna Madylus and Counterpoise, has been acclaimed at venues up and down the country. Telling the story of the tempestuous affair of Oskar Kokoschka and Alma Mahler, the score weaves poetic and epistolary texts by Kokoschka into a musical fabric that references fin-de-siècle Vienna (including the music of Wagner and Alma Mahler) while being of our own time. Kokoschka's Doll is complemented by a sequence of music and text, featuring the work of Gustav and Alma Mahler, Wagner and Zemlinsky, under the title The Art of Love: Alma Mahler's Life and Music.
For more details see here. Projects
The Shackled King/Brünnhilde's Dream
This new work by John Casken, based on Shakespeare's King Lear, once again features the legendary Sir John Tomlinson, affording him the opportunity to incarnate the aging, delusional king in a musical setting that incorporates Shakespeare's text in the form of speech, Sprechstimme and singing. Rozanna Madylus plays the roles of Cordelia and the Fool.
The other half of the programme is a sequence of words and music entitled Brünnhilde's Dream, imagining the state of mind of Wotan's favourite Valkyrie daughter as she lies on the rock, surrounded by fire, after the end of Die Walküre. Music by Wagner, Fanny Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, Zemlinsky, Berg, Szymanowski, Henze and Johanna Müller-Hermann.
Medea's Cell/The Story of Jenny
The internationally acclaimed soprano Susan Bullock takes centre stage in an enthralling double-bill. Medea's Cell (text by Keith Warner, music by David Blake) is a reworking of the classical myth in a contemporary setting. In a condemned cell on the eve of her execution, this modern Medea is accused of a murder of which she's innocent. Her own children die without her lifting a finger. Is she guilty? Or is she also a victim? A noir murder mystery.
Keith Warner, one of the leading opera directors of the day, joins forces with David Blake, composer of Toussaint (ENO, 1977) and other well-received works of music theatre.
Medea's Cell is complemented by a monodrama telling the story of Jenny, the protagonist of several Brecht/Weill songs. The sequence includes Alabama Song, Speak Low, My Ship and Surabaya Johnny, with linking text by Barry Millington.
Rags to Riches
For over four decades Willard White has been in demand on the world's stages as an operatic bass-baritone of exceptional quality and charisma. With the all-star ensemble Counterpoise he presents an evocative programme of music and poetry tracing the progress of rag, blues and other jazz forms from the Deep South and Harlem to the legendary cabarets of Paris and Berlin. Music by some of the greats of the era, including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Kurt Weill, George Gershwin ('A Foggy Day', 'Love Walked In') and Frederick Hollander (of 'Falling in Love Again' fame) as well as the spirituals that Sir Willard delivers with incomparable poignancy.