Dare to Dream brings together children from Syria, Uganda, Bangladesh and Buckinghamshire to create an innovative newly commissioned children’s opera to be premiered at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday 18 March 2019 at 7pm.
A massed choir of 650 primary school children from Buckinghamshire, a stage company of 90 primary school children from three Bucks schools, soloists Claire Wild (soprano) and Kieran Rayner (baritone) and a 25-piece orchestra from Buckinghamshire Music Trust will perform Dare to Dream. Poems and themes initiated and explored in Skype workshops, connecting the stage company children with pupils in the three other countries have been interwoven into a libretto by Lucinda Jarrett and Chris Rawlence from Rosetta Life. Composer Hannah Conway has taken this libretto and ideas from the workshops to create the score for the opera, working with film-maker Claudia Lee and designer Rhiannon Newman-Brown to create a breath taking multi-media, staged opera production incorporating film into the design and the composition. The filmed content will bring the young poets from Syria, Uganda and Bangladesh to the stage and incorporate their images and voices into the production.
Inspired by Rosetta Life's Dream a Difference global poetry project for children and directed by Garsington Opera’s Karen Gillingham, Dare to Dream is a partnership project between Buckinghamshire Music Trust (BMT), Garsington Opera and Rosetta Life, funded by the American Friends of Garsington Opera.
These children across the globe have explored some challenging conversations about difficult lives and have developed a shared vision of hope through friendship and a belief in their collective future.
Dare to Dream forms the second half of Echoes 8, a biennial singing event produced by BMT, with Love & Life, a song cycle performed by another 850 Buckinghamshire primary singers in the first half.
Tickets from https://www.royalalberthall.com/