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Opera

Composition for many English Touring Opera projects including two large scale community operas involving multiple community groups, all imagined and directed Tim Yealland. A House On The Moon took place in Wolverhampton Grand Theatre and One Breath in community venues in Sheffield and Doncaster. We also created a curtain raiser for ten year olds on the anniversary of the Bosnian war called Towards An Unknown Port which was performed at the Royal Opera House and on tour.

Towards an Unknown Port (2012) The words were adapted from poems by children in Terezin concentration camp and children who lived through the Bosnian conflict. The work formed part of an English National Opera evening which also included Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis, also written in Terezin.

A House on the Moon (2007) was a new opera in Wolverhampton, working with multiple different communities, and celebrating the diversity of the West Midlands, and performed at the Grand Theatre.

One Breath (2005) by Rachel Leach and Helen. This major collaboration with 200 people of every age and ability in Sheffield and Doncaster was performed on the largely forgotten site where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned for 11 years.

As well as these projects Helen composed for several ETO schools projects.

Tete a Tete has also been a long-term collaborator on new opera creation. My favourite was The Parrot which I created with lyricist Alasdair Middleton. Alasdair found a story in a newspaper about a parrot who told a man that his wife was having an affair and from this Alasdair developed a masterly libretto.

“Helen Chadwick’s terrific short opera.” The Observer

Explore
Tom Morris and John Lloyd Davies both created paths for me into the opera world and encouraged the new forms that I was exploring with Steven Hoggett using song, story and movement.