Having outgrown their Riverside Studios Hammersmith home, innovative opera peddlers Tête à Tête are preparing to fill the performance spaces and streets of King’s Cross with the sounds of tenors and sopranos over the next few weeks.
The focus will be on Central Saint Martin’s from today (24th July) until 3rd August, and then a short punt away, just over the canal to King’s Place (from 7th-10th August), with between five and eleven different shows to choose from on each date of the festival.
But most exciting of all? Regular, free pop-up-opera performances: shows you’ll find making full use of their new home, appearing everywhere from atmospheric little corners behind the station to the sweeping public spaces in and around Granary Square.
With well-priced tickets and the chance to see up to three things in a night, the festival should deliver on its intention to open up opera to all. Chuck in over 30 world premieres and plenty to challenge fusty old perceptions of what opera is, or should be all about, and the whole thing looks like another winner for what might just be London’s fastest rising cultural quarter.
“I’ve lived just around the corner from our venues for 20 years,” says artistic director Bill Bankes-Jones, “and am thrilled to have seen the change in the area over that time. It’s especially exciting that through our festival we are able to bring Central Saint Martin’s, King’s Place and the King’s Cross development into what I’m sure is their closest creative partnership to date.”
Two to watch: Bill Bankes-Jones’ picks
Ticketed opera: “It has to be April in the Amazon, a tour de force for contemporary music star mezzo-soprano Loré Lixenberg and the stunning Chroma ensemble, not least because I commissioned and am directing it, but also we’re in the middle of utterly breathtaking rehearsals as we speak. It’ll be extraordinary.”
