Grimeborn 2014, Arcola Theatre

Think opera is all periwigs and breeches, black ties and binoculars? Think again. Grimeborn is the Arcola’s month-long celebration of alternative opera. Now in its 8th year, the festival has become pivotal in introducing new audiences to the genre and promoting some of the finest emerging composers, artists and musicians.  Expect a mixture of stripped back classics, outré forgotten works and innovative new productions, all performed in the heart of Dalston. With all productions performed in English within an intimate pair of theatres, it may just change your mind about those periwigs.
Amongst this year’s eleven productions, there are baroque masterpieces from Monteverdi and Handel, a new production starring shadow puppets and a long-lost 1946 gem set around a séance. With so much an offer, it’s easy to be overwhelmed, so we’ve selected a handful of highlights that will challenge your perceptions of opera.
Aylin Bozok,  winner of the WhatsOnStage Best Newcomer award for her Pelléas et Mélisande at Grimeborn last year, will return to the Arcola to direct Jules Massenet’s classic  Werther  (19th to 23rd Aug), adapted from Goethe’s novel. Expect understated staging highlighting the protagonist’s simmering passion for Lotte.
Why see one opera when you can see three? Women’s Box (26th – 28th Aug) is an omnibus of three works by British female composers, performed by Size Zero Opera and the Ligeti Quartet. Celebrating the inclusive of female boxing in the Commonwealth Games, these newly commissioned miniatures celebrate the roles of women in society. Cathy ‘The Bitch’ Brown, former boxing world champion, has been on hand to advise the musicians.
Miika Hyytiäinen’s  Aikainen  (1st to 3rd Sept), meaning ‘early’ or ‘about time’ in Finish, is an exploration of the relationship between time and music. Debuted in Berlin this April, it combines visual arts, performance, poetry and film. Each part deals with a specific aspect of time and its effect on music, but also with the power and diversity of the human voice. Uniquely, it uses instruments that have been specifically 3D-printed for the piece. This will be one of the most inventive new operas premiered in London this year.
The festival closes (5th – 7th Sept) with the Melos Orchestra playing two stunning explorations of madness from across the 20th century. William Walton’s Façade  (1922) sets Edith Sitwell’s experimental poetry to humorous, peculiar melodies. Peter Maxwell Davies’  Eight Songs for a Mad King  (1969) is a different beast altogether, a chilling sequence sung from the perspective of the sputtering, tempestuous King George III.