Many thanks to our brilliant director Poppy Burton Morgan and Will Reynolds the genius of design, lighting and projection. Thanks also to our amazing pianist Richard Casey and to Carlos Del Cueto, the conductor and musical director. Thanks to Heather Doole who produced for Metta Theatre and to Liz Webb who produced for the New Music Players, and to Emily Jenkins, the assistant director. But most of all, thanks to our incredibly talented and committed cast:
Cocteau (baritone): Andrew McIntosh
Princess (mezzo): Lucy Williams
Orpheus (tenor): Peter Kirk
Eurydice (soprano): Emily Phillips
Raymond (counter-tenor): Ben Williamson
Eurydice (video artist): Loren O’Dair.

The picture above shows Andrew McIntosh as Cocteau and Peter Kirk as Orpheus. You can view some more photos from rehearsals here. We’re hoping to produce a touring production in 2011, with a fully scored instrumentation.

cocteau in the underworld trailer from william reynolds on Vimeo.

William Reynolds, designer and video maker for the forthcoming Grimeborn Festival production of Cocteau in the Underworld, has put together a fabulous trailer for the opera which is now available for viewing on vimeo.

For anyone who’s interested in knowing a bit more about CITU, here’s an article written by the show’s producer, Heather Doole, running in The List.

Cocteau in the Underworld, music by Ed Hughes, words by me, will be performed in a double bill with Philip Glass’s opera of Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles, in this year’s Grimeborn Festival on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 August.

Director is Poppy Burton-Morgan, with design and video by William Reynolds.

A must-see event for any fans of Cocteau! Or Ed Hughes. Or Philip Glass. Or even of me.

The Festival programme is:

Grimeborn – The Opera Festival
Curated by Andrew Steggall

Monday 9th August and Tuesday 10th August

Britten – THE PRODIGAL SON

Mendelssohn – THE HOMECOMING

Wednesday 11th August and Thursday 12th August

Bernstein – TROUBLE IN TAHITI

Burke & Waterfield – SPILT MILK

Friday 13th August and Saturday 14th August

Britten – THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA

Monday 16th August

Scott & Curtis – VICE

Sunday 15th August and Tuesday 17th August

Rogers – THE RAVEN

Roulston – CROW

D’Heudieres & Evans – POISON GARDEN

Wednesday 18th and Thursday 19th August

Moore - THE DIARIES OF ADAM AND EVE

Le Gendre – HOW I WONDER

Campkin & Reynolds – STONE HEART

Friday 20th August and Saturday 21st August

Hughes & Morris – COCTEAU IN THE UNDERWORLD

Glass – LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES

There’s more about the festival as a whole here.

Loren O’Dair as Eurydice.

Eurydice again, with burning candle and book.

“Eternal Orpheus, more voice than man…”

“One petal from a blood red flower, imbued with a soothing power…”

The shots give you some idea of the visual styling of the production planned for the Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola Theatre in August. More details to come!

A very lively and engaging compere he was, with a snippet of interesting information and a quip for every segment performed. Pondering our own contribution, Cocteau in the Underworld, he mused, “Ah Jean Cocteau. The only poet I know whose name is made up of two body parts.”

The event was a cabaret-style evening, in that we sat at tables and sipped drinks purchased from a bar in the auditorium (if you could afford them! – this was still the Royal Opera House). The audience was somewhat more respectful than the usual cabaret audience. There was no talking or walking around during the performances.

To liven things up a little, Gough had devised a musical “election-prediction machine”, which called for a moment of audience participation in the second half. We were invited to join in a round made up of the party leaders’ names “Dave, Gordon, Nick…” Oh, with gorgeous George (Galloway) thrown in for comic effect. The singing was stopped at a random point – and whoever’s name was being sung at that moment was predicted to win the election. In the event, the result was inconclusive, so the musical swingometer confirms the pundits’ expectations: it’s going to be a hung parliament.

As for the opera snippets themselves, a broad range of musical – and dramatic – styles were represented. I was extremely pleased with how our piece came across. The new element of video projection, devised by Metta Theatre‘s Poppy Burton Morgan and Will Reynolds, was very exciting, and went some way towards mapping out a visual style for a full production. Roll on Grimeborn Festival in August!

To get you in the mood, here’s an article about one of the other operas being previewed on the same evenings as ours. It’s based on Tanya Gold’s column about her battles with weight and smoking.

The evening will be a cabaret style event, with a cash bar inside the auditorium.

Baritone Owen Gilhooly in the 2009 Brighton Festival Production of Cocteau in The Underworld

Exposure is a programme of semi-staged performances of works currently in development with ROH2. I’m very excited to announce that Cocteau in the Underworld, the opera I’ve written with the composer Ed Hughes, will be included in the next Exposure evenings. (If you’re wondering, I wrote the words!) Basically, a ten minute extract will be performed, along with extracts from other operas in development. One of the other treats (or should that be tweats?) lined up is Twitterdammerung, an opera created around twitter tweets!

The event will be held from April 14 to April 17 at the Linbury Studio Theatre inside the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. As far as I know, we have slots on the first and last nights.

I’m very exciting about the production of our excerpts, which will include some entirely new mixed-media content.

Tickets are £10. I’ll post more details when I have it!