My opera Blond Eckbert (premiered by ENO in 1994) is now on tour with English Touring Opera. The tour journey stretches from Buxton to Exeter; it seems a blessing during these difficult times for the artform of opera that such things can still happen. I attended the first night, at the Hackney Empire, and it was a particular joy to see the show in a "proper old theatre" after the many new operas I've seen, including my own, in studio spaces, which can initially at least be rather anodyne in atmosphere.
Blond Eckbert (in this "Pocket Version"with an orchestra of ten players) is only around 65 minutes long, and I believe is a very demanding listen. Some managements perform it on its own (which happened, comfortably I felt, at the Aldeburgh Festival this summer.) Others have teamed it up in a double bill - but I don't think we've yet found the exact title that creates a "Cav and Pag" style evening (!)
ETO, for this autumn tour, have devised a 45-minute first half piece called "Do not take my story for a fairy tale" (a very significant quotation from Tieck's Blond Eckbert story) which I thought charming, and an excellent way of getting into the German Romantic mood. It animates a series of Tieck-period songs by amongst others CPE Bach, Beethoven and Schubert into a theatrical narrative. Most impressively, this first half is played on period instruments, before the switch at half-time to modern ones for Eckbert. It's an example of the freedom and flexibility which I've admired before in this friendly company's work. Big thanks to director Robin Norton-Hale and conductor Gerry Cornelius for my own experience here.
PICTURED - Not the Harz Mountains (home of Blond Eckbert and Co.) but instead a suitable scene from Lower Austria.
