Opera Forward Festival 2024

Urgent, compelling and extravagant: the Opera Forward Festival (OFF) is a defiant exploration of uncharted territory. With ground-breaking music theatre productions, distinctive performances and in-depth programmes, we try to bring new sounds in the world of opera. Immerse yourself in musical performances and presentations by both established names and a new generation of creatives.

Keep an eye on this webpage for the latest information about the programme.

Operas

The key theme in this season’s Opera Forward Festival is (ir)responsibility. How far do our responsibilities extend, who is prepared to shoulder them, what kind of world will we face if we keep deferring them? And what could we achieve if we do decide to take responsibility?

Jocasta’s Line

Jocasta’s Line: Ancient tragedy in contemporary form

These two works – Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex (1927) and Samy Moussa’s world premiere Antigone (2020) – are all about crime and punishment. This new production by the top British choreographer and director Wayne McGregor brings together the worlds of classical tragedy, modern dance and music from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

9-24 March 2024

The Four Note Opera

Dark comedy about singers who have no say

Inspired by Luigi Pirandello’s meta-theatre, composer Tom Johnson wrote a piece for a group of singers who have only four notes at their disposal (A, B, D and E) and couldn’t sing about anything other than the opera they are now performing in. Of course, such is an impossible situation: the opera ends in utter rigidity.

Fifty years ago, the Four Note Opera was a mocking reflection on opera norms. Is the criticism still relevant?

15-17 March 2024

A crisis of responsibility

In 2021, a Dutch court ruled that Shell was legally responsible for its contribution to climate change. In The Shell Trial, the various voices in the climate debate are heard and it becomes increasingly clear that we will not make any progress by endlessly pointing the finger at one another. The message of this topical opera is that the climate crisis is above all a crisis of responsibility.

16-21 March 2024