Buckinghamshire-based company Garsington Opera is working with the Lord Mayor’s Appeal on a youth opera project with 250 young people aged from 11 to 18 from six London schools.
Led by a professional creative team from Garsington Opera, the students will devise their own opera inspired by Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1787). They will write their own words, compose music, sing repertoire from the opera and design the set and costumes.
The project will culminate in a performance fusing the genres of rap, YouTube and opera, with the young people at the heart of the piece. The production will be performed to an invited audience on the afternoon of 16 July 2019 at the Old Library in the Guildhall, City of London. The programme will be documented in a short film created by the charity Positive Action through Creativity.
The six schools taking part are City of London Academy, Drapers’ Academy, Hammersmith Academy, Prendergast School, Prendergast Ladywell School and Westminster City School. Many of the students involved in the project have little experience of music and drama, while others are studying them. Art and design students will be involved backstage, in design, exhibition and stage management.
The outreach project is part of the Lord Mayor’s Appeal, an extensive programme of educational and charitable activities. It precedes a fundraising dinner taking place in the evening of 16 July. A Night at the Opera is an abridged performance of Don Giovanni that will be given by the Alvarez Young Artists of Garsington Opera. It will raise funds for Appeal. Booking for this event is now open.
The Lord Mayor’s Appeal, A Better City for All, is a multi-year project aiming to bring together businesses, employees, neighbouring communities and charities to find solutions to some of London’s most pressing societal issues.
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Schoolchildren from across London will come together to create a brand new production based on Mozart’s Don Giovanni.