Andrew Norman: A Journey to the Moon – Youth Firm rehearsal, Garsington Opera 2024 (Picture: Julian Guidera)

American composer Andrew Norman is probably greatest recognized for his orchestral works from Sacred Geometry (2003) to Play (2013) to Maintain (2018), which have received varied awards together with the 2017 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Music, while the Los Angeles Philharmonic received the Grammy Award for Finest Orchestral Efficiency for his or her 2019 recording of Maintain.

Norman has, up to now, solely written one opera, A Journey to the Moon from 2017 which is subtitled ‘a melodrama for youngsters’. The work was commissioned by Simon Rattle and premiered in Berlin with the Berlin Philharmonic, 200 volunteer singers and an orchestra made up of faculty youngsters alongside members of the Philharmonic. Norman says of the piece that it was ‘conceived as an expertise as a lot for the big variety of individuals making it as for the viewers watching it.’ However that it’s ‘at the start a youngsters’s opera, to be carried out by and for youngsters‘. Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra gave the work its first UK efficiency in a semi-staging on the Barbican Corridor. 

Andrew Norman: A Journey to the Moon – Grownup Firm rehearsal, Garsington Opera 2024 (Picture: Julian Guidera)

Andrew Norman’s A Journey to the Moon is now receiving a full staging at Garsington Opera on 30 and 31 July 2024, directed by Karen Gillingham, (Gasington’s Inventive Director of Studying & Participation), and carried out by Douglas Boyd with the Philharmonia Orchestra, skilled soloists together with Robert Murray and Jennifer France, and the Garsington Opera Youth and Grownup group firms, plus youngsters from two native main colleges making some 150 native folks in all. 

It is a group efficiency, and as with Garsington’s different group ventures, the occasion is inter-generational, with native folks of various generations working shoulder-to-shoulder with skilled singers and artistic groups.

For a lot of members of the Youth and Grownup firms, the efficiency brings the expertise of working alongside professionals in addition to the prospect to make associates with different firm members. As one members of the Grownup firm put it, ‘I’ve been concerned in Garsington Opera Grownup Firm for over 13 years and I like it. Singing brings me pleasure and I relish the problem of pushing myself outdoors my consolation zone. Studying concerning the intricate tapestry of an opera’s creation alongside top-tier professionals is one thing actually fantastic.‘ 

As Karen Gillingham explains, ‘the toddler group (5-7yr olds) got here up
with moon video games – crater hop scotch and meteoroid soccer. They’re
bursting with concepts and tremendous cute. One of many youngsters is struggling
from extreme trauma and is selective mute. He loves the rehearsals and
sings throughout them. It’s an act of bravery for him to do that.‘ 

Andrew Norman: A Journey to the Moon – Grownup Firm rehearsal, Garsington Opera 2024 (Picture: Julian Guidera)

The opera takes its theme from Georges Méliès’ seminal 1902 silent movie [see it on YouTube], and the fantastical opera explores how linguistic limitations should be damaged down in order that Earth folks can talk with Moon folks, who’ve their very own lyrical lunar language, and ultimately all of them study to rise above their mutual distrust and are available collectively to beat a mysterious risk.

The pictures on this article have been taken at latest rehearsals for A Journey to the Moon with the Garsington Opera Youth and Grownup group firms on the new Garsington Studios.

Full particulars from Garsington Opera’s web site.