Date(s) - 01/07/2022
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Alongside new song cycles by Mark Anthony Turnage and Amelia Clarkson, Zoë new set of songs “In the Park”, for tenor and piano, will be given their first performance by Alessandro Fisher and Lana Bode at Opera Holland Park’s beautiful venue in the heart of one of London’s most beautiful parks.
From the heart of the global paradigm shift and intense lockdown interiors, people found solace in nature, coming up for air in the public spaces permitted by pandemic regs, seeing that others were going through the same thing, that there was comfort in community outside. In London, that meant parks, those tree-guarded sanctuaries for break- ups, make-ups, playing, resting, dreaming, breathing; a designated space where Earth and sky meet to converse.
As the umbrella commission title implies – “Green Spaces, a celebration in Song” – this set of four songs springs from this strange time, each one concerning a well-known London park. Texts romp across time, from the 16th century rollicking and heavily censored filth of the Earl of Rochester’s walk through the pleasure gardens of St James Park, to Muriel Sparks’ crisp, taut, snap-shot of 1950s Kensington Gardens. We join two of the 101 Dalmatians for a leisurely sunset stroll in Regents Park, and land up in one of my favourite London spots, the beautiful Kyoto gardens in Holland Park, home to the annual opera festival.
My enormous thanks to Hannah Sandison, to whom this work is dedicated, for this truly joyful commission, and to the RVW Trust for their support.
Venue: Opera Holland Park Theatre, Ilchester Pl, London W8 6LU