Birmingham Opera Company: Open Fund for Organisations
Brum Commissions: a development opportunity for 3 composer-writer teams
From its inception Birmingham Opera Company has endeavoured to tell the stories of its city and its people, harnessing the immense creative power of opera. Working outside the norms of most classical music and opera companies, we have no fixed venue and our work lives in the socially and ethnically diverse people and found spaces of our home city. We present operatic masterpieces at affordable ticket prices believing that the best opera should not only be available but also accessible to all. We encourage local people to take part as audience and as volunteer performers alongside diverse professional artists, facilitators, and production staff, from those taking their first steps in a career to those recognised as leaders and internationally profiled in their field. This two-way process creates the opportunity for more people to be a part of opera whilst enriching our work with a wealth of human experience, which in turn delivers accessible, resonant, and often visceral presentations which harness the full potential of what great opera can be.
Under our new strand, Brum Commissions, this year we will support 3 exciting composer-writer teams to each create a 10-15-minute piece for 1 singer and 2 instrumentalists. The new works will be performed across the diverse communities of Birmingham in Spring 2024. The selected artists are: Daniel Blanco Albert (composer) and Roxanne Korda (librettist)<br />Cassie Kinoshi (composer) and lydia luke (librettist) Michael Taplin (composer) and Gareth Mattey (librettist)