Seven Angels. Glyn Maxwell
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Music by Luke Bedford
Words by Glyn Maxwell
Performances 2011
17, 18 June CBSO Centre Birmingham, WORLD PREMIERE
20 June Bute Theatre, Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Cardiff
28, 29 June Tramway, Glasgow
3 July Brighton Dome – Corn Exchange
8 July Oxford Playhouse
12, 14, 15 July Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House, London
16 July Latitude Festival, Suffolk
The Opera Group and BCMG production, co-produced with ROH2 and Tramway.
www.theoperagroup.co.uk www.bcmg.org.uk
Running time about 1hour 45 minutes including interval
Welcome to Seven Angels
Five years ago we sat down to talk about how a collaboration between us might sound. We each arrived at a meeting with a wish-list of the composers we most wanted to commission. The meeting was short because Luke Bedford sat at the top of both our lists.
When Luke had identified Glyn Maxwell as the librettist he would work with, they wrote a concert work for BCMG which took a moment in Milton’s Paradise Lost as its starting point. Good Dream She Has was premiered in Birmingham in 2008.
After completing the concert work, we took Luke and Glyn to visit Wakehurst Place, Kew Garden’s outpost which houses the millennium seedbank, where a combination of edenic gardens and a pessimistic futurologist challenged us all to see Milton’s ecology in a new light. Then we watched as Luke and Glyn’s shared fascination with Milton, with language and with the retelling of tales shaped a piece which has the weight of myth and yet which could only have been made now. They talked about exploding the Milton and constructing a new story from the shards.
And then the conversation exploded too. BCMG has a long history of collaborating with Jonathan Watkins at Ikon. Through Jonathan we met Japanese artist Tadasu Takamine who has not only designed the opera, but also has a concurrent exhibition at Ikon Gallery this summer. Our partnerships with our co-producers at ROH2 at the Royal Opera House and Tramway Glasgow have been essential to making the production happen. And our collaboration with Friends of the Earth has given birth to a sister opera which will tour outdoors alongside Seven Angels. We are grateful also to the many funding partners and donors who have supported the development, commissioning, producing and touring of the project.
Collaboration is a creative necessity – we are at our best when in conversation with each other, with artists and with audiences. Welcome to the conversation – we look forward to hearing what you think.
Seven Angels was commissioned and produced by The Opera Group and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and co-produced with ROH2 and Tramway Glasgow. Commissioned with funds generously provided by the John Feeney Charitable Trust, the opera was developed with the support of a Jerwood Opera Fellowship at Aldeburgh Music and the Columbia Foundation Fund of the Capital Community Foundation.
The Opera Group is grateful to the following individuals for their support of Seven Angels:
David Bernstein, Robin Bidwell, Geoffrey Collens, Peter Espenhahn, Ian Hamilton, John Hughes, Thomas Lingard, Peter Lofthouse, Robert McFarland, Anthony Newhouse and Virginia Rushton.
BCMG is grateful to the following individuals for their support of Seven Angels:
Viv and Hazel Astling, Paul and Jean Bacon, William and Jane Barry, Paul Bond, Christopher Carrier, John Christophers, Alan Cook, Anne P Fletcher, Barrie Gavin, Richard Hartree, Tessa and Charles King-Farlow, Jeremy Lindon, Elizabeth Robinson for the Rowan Trust, Carolyn and Richard Sugden, Janet Waterhouse, Elizabeth and Barrie Withers; BCMG Foundation members: Kiaran Asthana, Alan S Carr, Alan Cook, Bernard Samuels, John and Anne Sweet; and two donors wishing to remain anonymous.
We are grateful to the following funders for their support of Seven Angels:
Arts Council England, Arts & Business, Daiwa Foundation, D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, Colwinston Charitable Trust, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, Japan Foundation, Jerwood Space, Leche Trust, Reed Foundation, RVW Trust and funding through Beyond Borders from the PRS for Music Foundation, Creative Scotland, Arts Council Northern Ireland, Arts Council Wales and Foyle Foundation.
Music by Luke Bedford
Words by Glyn Maxwell
Additional thanks:
Better World Books, Big Give, Bob & Elisabeth Boas, Pete Foggitt, Rachel Gimber, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Sophie Henstridge, King’s College London, Chelsea Lawrence, Thomas Lingard, James Longford, Niki Longhurst, Sherry Neyhus, Oberon Books, Jonathan Reekie, Faye Scott and Green Alliance, Wakehurst Place, Kew Gardens, Jonathan Watkins and Ikon Gallery, Joanna Watson and Friends of the Earth, Weil, Gotshal & Manges.
Paradise Lost
Milton’s Paradise Lost provided a starting point for a meditation on the relationship between humanity and the resources of the earth. Where the great poem is a symphonic retelling of scripture, Seven Angels was grown from fragments, shards of the poem, as if that huge incandescent structure had toppled from its seat in heaven and shattered into glimpses, dreams, strange tales, lost threads, all strewn across a broken landscape.
In the world of Paradise Lost, we know the story, we know the outcome, we know what Milton intends: the glorious pentameters sound the inevitability of the Devils’ fall from Heaven, Man’s fall from Eden, the Redemption through Christ. Seven Angels grows in a world without inevitability, without known story or outcome, with forms and rhythms that slide and mutate, with causes unclear and effects unknown. This world.
Glyn Maxwell
The Story
Seven figures find themselves on a desert, having dropped out of the sky. They are angels, abandoned by God, forgotten by Satan, passed over by Milton, fallen out of history. They have fallen for so long they no longer know who punished them, who they are, where they are, or why. The land is scorched and barren, the air thick with poison. Shadows war perpetually on every horizon.
They think they hear a creature, crying on the wind. They wonder – is it looking for us? In panic, the seven try to piece together a story to make sense of what has happened in this place. They make a series of rapid deductions: if the creature is crying, there must have been a better