Riders to the Sea written by Ralph Vaughan Williams based on the play by JM Synge visits MAST Mayflower Studios from Thursday 30 January to Saturday 1 February 2025.
Weaving together live performance, projection and recorded sound to create a more intimate, visceral telling of the Vaughan Williams opera, this one act tragedy follows a family in an ancient fishing community haunted by the grief of losing nearly all of their male members at sea.
As matriarch Maurya and her daughters try to carry on with their lives, remaining son Bartley finds himself drawn back home, setting off a chain of seemingly inevitable events.
Riders to the Sea sees OperaUpClose’s trademark reframing of a classic to explore universal themes of love, duty, grief, identity and humankind’s relationship with the natural world.
A cast of opera singers and instrumentalists will have equal agency as storytellers, removing traditional barriers between pit, stage and audience in a similar vein to the company’s 2023 version of The Flying Dutchman, enabling intense and direct musical storytelling.
Originally written as a play by JM Synge, the opera by much loved composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was first performed in 1937.
Composer and conductor Michael Betteridge has now reimagined the score into a new chamber orchestration for oboe, clarinet and accordion with Director Flora McIntosh bringing the narrative into the 21st Century as an exploration in reconciling traumatic memory. As part of their commitment to find new and creative ways to increase access to the art form and enhance the theatrical experience for all, Riders to the Sea will be the companies first production to integrate captions into the set design, using font, colour and animation to enhance text as a key part of the visual language and storytelling.
“It is an honour and a privilege to collaborate with so many exceptional creative voices on this project,” says Flora McIntosh, Director & Artistic Director. at OperaUpClose “This approach has shone a bright light on the universality of the themes in Riders to the Sea and enabled a bold, new take on the narrative that speaks directly to the now.’
The production also features a specially commissioned choral Prologue; The Last Bit of Moon, with a poetic libretto co-written by local Solent group of writers and poets, ArtfulScribe’s Community Sirens Collective who are led by cross-disciplinary artist Antosh Wojzik.
Set to music by Michael Betteridge, the chorus has been recorded by a network of male and low-voice community choirs from across the UK including the award-winning LGBTQ+ open access choir The Sunday Boys, and will be central to a sound and visual language for the production that combines live performance with recorded sound and projections.
“OperaUpClose have been really ambitious and modern in their approach,” says Michael Betteridge. “They’re taking this work, originally scored for a huge orchestra and pairing it down to something so intimate.”
Running Time: 65 minutes (no interval) | Suitable for ages 12+
Tickets for Riders to the Sea (30 January – 1 February 2025) are on sale at mayflower.org.uk or 02380 711811.
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