The Fables project has started! We’ve decided to write a regular blog to chart the progress of our ambitious new project. Fables – A Film Opera is a collection of four new commissions – four composers and four filmmakers working with all our performers around the country to create four short ‘Film Operas’ based on fables. The pieces are being devised by all groups and will be premiered with a live theatrical staging at Spitalfields Music on 17 December before the films tour.

Matt Peacock, CEO and Producer

27 July

It’s all happening here… Wonderful music from Emily for the ‘Nightingale and the Rose’ coming through the airwaves and we’ve got through the script for ‘Hey Come on Out’. The music for ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ is on its way and we’re recording all the North East groups singing the score of ‘Hartlepool Monkey’ tomorrow. Good luck guys!

15 July

Looks like the Nightingale and the Rose fable will be given a more modern setting! Getting some serious interest from cinemas and festivals to screen the pieces on tour…

12 July

We’ve just had a brilliant meeting with Mira Calix and the Flat-e boys to come up with a synopsis for the Boy who Cried Wolf following the devising day with our Crisis Skylight London and Luton NOAH groups. We’re dying to tell you lots about the piece but don’t want to ruin the surprise for audiences. Suffice it to say the piece will based on vocal and visual consequences!

Last week Orlando Gough and Iain Finlay were workshopping with our Notts and Manchester groups again – we didn’t get clearance to use our Rabbit Fable sadly but we have found another which is really exciting: Shinichi Hoshi’s estate have given us permission to adapt Hey Come on Out, a fantastic Japanese fable. Our performers have been practising singing into a hole in the ground…

Paul Sartin and Emma Bernard visited the North East to sing through some of the Hartlepool Monkey score that Paul and Andy Mellon have written following the devising day in the North East. The piece is a cracker – part folk, part sea shanty and the group love it and sing it beautifully!

1 July

Devising days have now taken place for all the groups. The days went really well and all the artists are very inspired by the creative response to the fables from all our performers.  A huge amount of material came out of the devising days and the composers are now busily creating the music and lyrics and the film-makers are deciding where to shoot the films. Below is some material from our final devising day where three of our London groups worked with Gaelle Dennis and Emily Hall on The Nightingale and The Rose by Oscar Wilde together with director Emma Bernard.

Click here to listen to the whole group singing a new song  ‘I have hung ropes..’

Click here to listen to some poems that have been adapted  and stylised. Here is Andy reading his  group’s poem and another group reading their  poem

The photos below show the group devising scenes that might appear in the final film or on stage at the premiere. We created ’still’ pictures of scenes from the story and worked with the camera to see the difference between acting techniques used for the stage and film.

Creating still pictures from The Nightingale and The Rose

'The man cries; the Nightingale listens'

'The thorn pierces the Nightingale’s heart’

Gaelle workshops how emotions appear on the big screen with Ken

David acting on camera

David retelling part of the story

28th June

A great few weeks on Fables! The final devising day was really great and the Connections/Passage and QMH groups did some amazing work on the Nightingale and the Rose with Gaelle Denis, Emily Hall and singer Mara Carlyle. All the stories have now been picked! Very exciting new direction for the Notts/Manch Fable (watch this space) and one of the musical scores has just been completed! Andy Mellon and Paul Sartin have finished their score for the Hartlepool Monkey Fable for the North East groups! It’s just BRILLIANT and we can’t wait for everyone to share it. Lots of info going to all centres soon and thanks for all your fab comments and feedback. Please keep them coming.

8th June

We’re all set for the final Devising Day next week. Very exciting group of artists joining our performers from Passage, Connection at St Martins and Quenn Mary Hostel – BAFTA-award winning filmmaker Gaelle Denis, composer Emily Hall and singer Mara Carlyle. They are interested in presenting the group with Oscar Wilde’s beautiful fable, the Nightingale and the Rose.

3rd June

Here is a wonderful poem sent in by Dawn Parrott from Notts, inspired by the Devising Day at Opera North where we worked on the Poisonous Rabbit.

I want to be free
somewhere, some place, that
I only know in my dreams.

Run around, run away from this
town
to be
in a land of green,
In a land of green.

Where I am never captured
only seen,

Seen  through wild eyes
that only live to be free,
they only wait for the dawn
to rise, and the starts to crowd
their sky.

You don’t know how to set me
free, because a fair life, is
something you have never
lived to see.

You have never been
in a land of green
In a land of green.

Rejection,
no one’s seeing
no one’s listening,
Are these the feelings of
a human being?

Here I am.
In a cage with rage,
in a cage with rage.

I want to be set free.
Overwhelmed with the possibility
after what they did to me.

Used me, with no voice, to defend,
to say I’m against their experiment,
conditioned me this way.

I’m in need of what I can find,
In a land of green,
in a land of green.

All they see is what they
want to take away from me.

They only want to fill me, to
satisfy their own hunger and needs.

When you opened your arms,
I thought you were showing
how you cared.

Why did you not take me where
I belong, where you long to be,
to a land of green.

2 June

I promise we’ll get some audio and visuals uploaded soon! This week we’ve officially taken on Ashtar Alkhirsan our Line Producer for the project and Margaret Levin who will be working on Marketing. We’ve also had a great meeting with our friends from Spitalfields Music who are just about to launch their Summer festival next week. Check it out here. We’re organising hotels for the premiere in December and rehearsal times – looks like all our performers will arrive on 16th Dec for some mini rehearsals in the afternoon and then more rehearsing in the venue on 17th. We’re then planning three performances in the evening (the show should only be an hour so hopefully that won’t be too tiring!) Then there will be another night in a hotel and everyone will leave on 18th.

This week we’re also very excited that our last show has been shortlisted for a National Lottery Award. Please vote for us to reach the televised final here.

25 May 2010

The Devising Day in Newcastle (at Hoult’s Yard) was truly inspiring. Thanks to everyone involved – highlights of the day included some rousing folk and shanty singing led by Andy Mellon; great individual and group performances of local folk songs by everyone (including Malcolm on the Northumbrian Pipes!); scenes based on the story of the Hartlepool Monkey created by the group led by director Emma Bernard; filming techniques led by Tom Marshall (exploring close-ups and the subtlety of film acting compared with stage acting). And all in the blistering heat. Phew!

20 May 2010

Great meeting with composer Emily Hall, filmmaker Gaelle Denis and the singer Mara Carlyle who will be working on the London (QMH, Passage and Connection) Fable Film Opera. It looks like they are interested in an Oscar Wilde fable, the Nightingale and the Rose. Very exciting. Really looking forward to working with the North East groups tomorrow with Andy Mellon and Tom Marshall.

16 May 2010

Just had a brilliant meeting with our North East team (composers Andy Mellon and Paul Sartin and filmmaker Tom Marshall). Their Devising Day is next week at Hoult’s Yard in Newcastle where they are likely to be working on a fable which is a North East legend of the Hartlepool monkey!

12 May 2010

Welcome to Gaelle Denis who is our final filmmaker for the project. Gaelle, who is a BAFTA winner will be working with composer Emily Hall with our performers from Connection at St Martins, Passage and Queen Mary Hostel.

5 May 2010

Just had our London Devising Day with Mira Calix and Flat-e and our Crisis Skylight and NOAH Luton groups. Lots of new participants and a really buzzy session – we’re probably going to be working on the very famous fable the Boy Who Cried Wolf with this group.

30 April 2010

We’ve got our funding! Thank you to Arts Council England, Streetsmart, PRS Foundation, Northern Film and Media, RVW Trust, Macquarie Group Foundation, Garfield Weston Foundation and our performers at the Carmen fundraiser!

Devising Days have started – to create a concept for the film operas. First up was Leeds in late April (with our artistic partner Opera North) involving composer Orlando Gough and filmmaker Iain Finlay with our Manchester and Notts groups. Brilliant session – only problem is that the fable we want to use is in copyright! Watch this space…

William was always a total gentleman – giving up his seat for other people in rehearsals and his cheerfulness and kindness will live long in the memory.

For more information see here.

Around 12 visiting artists will join Streetwise’s National Training Day in March, hosted by ENO in London. This is one of 2 National Training Days that Streetwise delivers each year to help train our pool of 40 workshop leaders.

Streetwise has trained artists from other organisations in places as diverse as Aldeburgh Music, Boston and Japan. If successful, Streetwise hopes to run more training for external artists in the future.

The following week, Streetwise Opera and the famous choir of homeless people, The Choir of Hope and Inspiration will be working together all week at Federation Square. We will then be part of the Sing-Posium run by CHI Choir director Jonathan Welch.

For more details on My Secret Heart and a full tour list see our microsite www.mysecretheart.co.uk

An diverse mix of opera, folk and jazz, the CD includes beautiful solos like ‘Summertime’ sung by Alan from Virginia House in Newcastle, ’The Nottingham Streetwise Song’ composed by all members of the group, the title chorus from Paradise Moscow from our Booth Centre Group in Manchester and ’Skid Row’ from the Streetwise Choir.

Generously produced by Audio Network, the CD is on sale for £10 plus p&p.

To buy the CD, please email office@streetwiseopera.org or call 020 7495 3133.  

Matt Peacock spoke about the work of Streetwise Opera in a series on Radio 3 called Passion for Opera on 1st June. We will upload this 15-min programme soon.

BBC Breakfast broadcast a feature on Streetwise in a series about how entertainers prepare for Christmas. The piece features preparations leading up to the performance at The Passage’s Night Under the Stars at the Royal Festival Hall. Click on the screen below to see the feature.

BBC Radio 3 ‘Sunday Morning’ programme broadcast an excerpt of My Secret Heart. Mira Calix’s work was one of Joanna Macgregor’s Highlights of 2009 in a programme hosted by Iain Burnside. Joanna Macgregor said, ‘Streetwise Opera is a fantastic organisation which puts on stunning and ambitious projects. My Secret Heart was fabulously nuanced – it doesn’t work if it ticks boxes, you have to do it with utter authenticity, passion and commitment. This is why Streetwise Opera is so good – they don’t just do a project and use people – they follow up with people. Streetwise is doing something very powerful and new.’

BBC 1 Streetwise was also featured live on BBC 1 as part of the Lord Mayor’s Show on 14th November. Streetwise performer Bryan was interviewed as our Italian garden float went past – on it and walking to the side were a chorus of 30 Streetwise performers and workshop leaders singing Marriage of Figaro dressed in 18th century costume. It was an amazing event to be involved in with a combined live and TV audience of 2.5 million. Congratulations to everyone involved.

Photo copyright Chris Wiles Photography

This year, a packed Royal Festival Hall was treated to a host of stars from Stephen Fry to the pianist Teo Gheorghiu who performed Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto and then played the introduction to Streetwise Opera who sang ‘Somewhere’ from West Side Story.

At the end of the song, the whole audience rose to their feet in an unforgettable standing ovation. The piece was also being filmed by BBC who are running a piece on Streetwise Opera in Christmas week on BBC Breakfast.