Summer Opera, GSMD | LX Programmer

• Chris Hopkins conductor
• Victoria Newlyn director
• Louie Whitemore designer
• Jake Wiltshire lighting designer
• Joseph Beesley assistant conductor & chorus master
• Monica Nicolaides assistant director
• Amy Hill associate designer (costume)
• Jonathan Chan assistant lighting designer

Having only a basic understanding of the LX process, this show was a huge step up for me. With PLX, Ed Walters and Co-Programmer, Stanly Olden; I learnt an awful lot during this production and expanded my LX knowledge. With a much larger rig than I was used to, it was very beneficial having the responsibilities of prepping fixtures, leading a fit-up team, patching, programming, rig-checking and operating a show. It was also interesting to have to work alongside the massive motorized set.

“Weill’s music is wickedly apt. Never does the score allow any moment of wit or irony in the story to go unmarked, and it brilliantly underlines the characterization.”
Gramophone

A photographic studio in Paris. News arrives that the Tsar is coming.

First performed in Leipzig in 1928, Weill’s one-act comedy was extremely popular in its day and on the German stage, part of the now rarely performed “Zeitoper” genre of music theatre.

The performance opens with music from 17th Century Italy: students from Guildhall’s Opera department perform a collection of Monteverdi Madrigals alongside Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, an operatic scena for three voices.