2022 marks the 15th year of Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola Theatre. Our reimagining of Carmen will run as part of the festival from 9th – 13th August at 7pm. Click here to book tickets.
The festival programme for 2022 is brilliant as always and we are delighted to be part of it. Here are just a few of the other productions you can catch this year: Read more
We are delighted to announce the cast of Carmen:
Felicity Buckland
Felicity trained at the RNCM and on English National Opera’s Opera Works programme.
Recent solo appearances include Kasturbai, Glass Satyagraha for ENO, Wellgunde Wagner The Rhinegold for Birmingham Opera and Nicklausse, Offenbach The Tales of Hoffmann for Kentish Opera. Previous ENO highlights include cover roles in The Valkyrie, The Mask of Orpheus (Birtwistle), Orpheus in the Underworld, Carmen, and Olivier-Award winning Porgy and Bess. Elsewhere she has sung the title roles in Carmen (Kentish Opera) and La Cenerentola (High Time Opera); Rosina The Barber of Seville (Opera South) Rossweisse Die Walküre (Grange Park Opera); Olga Eugene Onegin (Opera Up Close, Opera South East, Mid Wales Opera (cover)); Dorabella Così Fan Tutte (Baseless Fabric Theatre); Cherubino The Marriage of Figaro, and 3rd Lady The Magic Flute (both Opera Up Close). She is a regular extra chorister for The Royal Opera House, ENO and Opera North.
Felicity is in demand for solo oratorio, music education projects and consort/session work, and is delighted to be a regular part of Baseless Fabric’s Learning and Participation Projects. Read more
Following the success of September 2020 and May 2021, we returned last week for a third tour of care homes to bring some musical joy to residents and staff across Merton and Wandsworth. It was a glorious, sunny week with only one wet morning – a miracle considering the unpredictability of the British weather! Not that the rain stopped us! Concert wellies were adorned and our incredible performers Claire Wild and Carla Ruaro didn’t bat an eyelid, performing their 7th well received concert of the week under a canopy during the showers.
The repertoire, put together by Claire and Carla, took us around the world from British folk songs, to German arias, to music from the Amazon Rainforest! It was a perfect balance of famous favourites and introductions to something new.
“Everyone is so lovely and professional. The music is superb. Loved it all. The residents wanted them to come back next week!” Read more
We are just one week away from our carehome concerts. Thanks to the support of the Postcode Community Trust, Soprano Claire Wild and Pianist Carla Ruaro and a small team will be bringing an hour of opera and musical joy to the gardens and carparks of 8 carehomes across Wandsworth and Merton. Read more
Since the start of term the hallways have been ringing with the Habanera at Links Primary School as our latest community project gets underway.
Each week a group of children attend an After School Opera Club run by Baseless Fabric and in partnership with Jigsaw4U. Our fantastic facilitators Bimpe Adeyemi and Ruth Routledge are working with the children to teach them about Bizet’s Carmen, and support them in creating and writing their own show inspired by the opera.
Ruth Routledge
Bimpe Adeyemi
The children will work with Bimpe and Ruth over the next two terms singing, acting, writing and devising together. Their work will culminate in a performance in July for family, friends, teachers and for the team of performers and creatives working on Baseless Fabric’s professional production of Carmen.
Tomorrow marks the start of our research and development workshop for our latest re-imagining, Carmen. This follows on from our acclaimed Die Fledermaus (4 stars The Guardian & The Stage) and Cosi Fan Tutte (Best Opera Production Finalist, OffWestEnd Awards). Over the course of 3 days we will be exploring our version of the piece, with a new modern English libretto by Joanna Turner, and score for violin, accordion and bassoon arranged by Leo Geyer.
Our work will culminate in a free sharing at 4.30pm at Lantern Arts Centre. If you’d like to attend you can sign up for tickets here. Read more
We are delighted to be partnering with Southwark Playhouse to offer a free opera skills sharing workshop from 1pm to 4pm on Friday 8th October 2021.
We are looking to meet facilitators who are interested in learning about opera and how their skills may be transferable to working in opera in future, and for us to meet talented facilitators to work with Baseless Fabric on our 2022 projects which will range from one-off sessions to long term programmes.
We recognise that opera is traditionally a white middle class artform and the lack of diversity in the arts is one of the sector’s most important issues. We strongly believe not only that opera is for everyone but that our casts and workshop leading teams should be representative of the South London areas in which we perform and where we provide young people with our opera workshops. As such, we strongly encourage theatre facilitators of colour to apply. Read more
Across 2 weeks last July, 14 workshops were delivered to 8 primary and secondary schools in Wandsworth & Merton. Sports halls were filled with the sounds of the Toreador Song and the moves from the latest TikTok trends as the children were introduced to Baseless Fabric’s adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen by our wonderful team of facilitators Rachel Maby, Juliane Gallant and Elliott Daley.
Feed
back from the students has been wonderful. 99% of students said that they liked the workshop with 81% of those saying they loved it. 85% of students said that after the workshop they would now definitely attend or consider attending an opera. When asked what they had learnt during the session answers ranged from as specific as “the position of the larynx when singing” to simply “that I like opera!” and “that opera can be fun!”
Possibly one of the most rewarding parts of these workshops is that our facilitators see the impact the experience can have on the students, and even see growth in the confidence and interest of individual children over the course of the session. For example, student ‘P’ started his session with his back to the facilitators. During the course of the workshop he became more interested, especially when Juliane compared music to his favourite subject, maths. By the end ‘P’ was fully involved, excited and he wanted to answer ALL the questions! Read more
This week marked the start of our Carmen Opera Taster Workshops to 8 primary and secondary schools in Wandsworth & Merton. The workshops were organised with the help of the lovely teams as Merton Music Foundation and Wandsworth Music and will be delivered over the next 2 weeks by our brilliant team of facilitators – Rachel Maby, Juliane Gallant, Elliott Daley and Elizabeth Humphries.
